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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25150258">Dynamic Metamorphism</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King'>Philosopher_King</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Three-Body Problem [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aang is 16, Age Difference, Angst and Humor, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Heavy Petting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Non-Graphic Smut, Polyamory, References to Depression, Relationship Discussions, Self-Denial, Zuko is 20, not a huge one but it still comes up as an issue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:21:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,067</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25150258</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Aang, Katara, and Zuko have become lovers, Aang and Zuko have the opportunity for a night alone in Cranefish Town (which will become Republic City). But Aang makes a confession that leads Zuko to have doubts about their arrangement. Aang seeks distraction from Toph, and she (surprisingly) provides some useful analysis.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang &amp; Toph Beifong, Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Three-Body Problem [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>202</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Aang's Confession</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is part of a series about the development of Aang, Katara, and Zuko's relationship, and would definitely make the most sense if read after the previous installments of the series, especially Part 1: "Geological Formations" and Part 4: "Angle of Incidence."</p><p>This fic involves discussions about the 4-year age difference between Aang and Zuko. As noted in the tags, the fic, and previous notes, Aang is 16 (nearing 17 at this point) and Zuko is 20. I have not applied the "underage" warning because that seems misleading, given the relatively small age gap and the different understandings of adulthood and maturity in the fictional world. The "Mature" rating is for things that are anticipated to happen in later chapters.</p><p>My planetary-themed titles are getting increasingly ridiculous. I was in an astronomical groove for a while, but now I've gone back to geology, which is where the series started. The title will be explained in Chapter 2.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We could call it the Fifth Nation.”</p><p>Aang made this suggestion to Zuko as they walked back from an informal tour of Cranefish Town, which before today Zuko had never seen, to the hotel where they were staying. Three months after their meeting with King Kuei in Ba Sing Se, Aang and Zuko were here for three days preparing for the Earth King’s visit, which had not yet been scheduled, but which might determine the fate of Aang’s starry-eyed scheme for a nation that belonged to all the Nations and to none.</p><p>Katara, meanwhile, was at the North Pole with her father and his Northern partner, Malina, seeking Chief Arnook’s support for the idea, as well as continuing their efforts to strengthen the bonds of friendship, culture, and knowledge between the Southern and Northern Water Tribes. Which meant, of course, that Aang had three nights to spend alone with Zuko. He tried to ignore the fluttering in his stomach that became increasingly sharp and urgent as they closed the distance with the hotel.</p><p>Zuko snorted. “You’re joking, right?”</p><p>“I didn’t think I was. Why, is it funny?”</p><p>“‘The Fifth Nation’ was the name of an infamous league of pirates, led mostly by rogue captains of the Southern Water Tribe. They preyed on ships in the Eastern Sea for centuries, until Kyoshi scattered them… about four hundred years ago, I think.”</p><p>“Oh.” Aang felt both foolish and disappointed. As usual, Zuko knew more about Aang’s own history than he did. “I thought it would have been a good name.”</p><p>“It was a good name!” Zuko said a little too brightly, obviously trying to make him feel better. “And the pirates came from all the Nations too, so… same idea.”</p><p>“Okay, what about… the League of Nations? No, wait, now you’ve got me thinking about pirates. The United Nations? The United Community of Nations?”</p><p>“I really think you should run these ideas by Sokka. He’s the one who’s good at naming things.”</p><p>“Some of the time,” Suki muttered from behind them. She and Ty Lee had both jumped at the opportunity to visit Cranefish Town as part of the Fire Lord’s Kyoshi Warrior guard (one of them for reasons that were obvious and carried a boomerang).</p><p>“All right, he’s a little hit or miss,” Zuko acknowledged. “But I’m all miss and no hit.”</p><p>“Aww, you’re too hard on yourself,” said Aang, elbowing him lightly. Even that brief, playful contact felt daring—especially in public, in broad daylight!—and the fluttering in Aang’s stomach intensified.</p><p>“In general, maybe; in this instance, definitely not.”</p><p>They were at the front door of the hotel now, and Aang’s heart felt like it was going to beat all the way up his throat and out his mouth. They had already checked in when Zuko arrived with his (modest) entourage, so they didn’t need to go through the routine with the stammering, starstruck desk manager again. As recently as two years ago, Aang had relished the celebrity aspects of being the Avatar, but they were already starting to grow stale, and he knew that Zuko had always been uncomfortable with the awe his station inspired (except for the fumbling attempts by commoners in other Nations to figure out how to address him, which he still found amusing in spite of himself… and so did Aang, unworthily).</p><p>Aang had refused the grand suite they had offered him—he was a humble monk, he insisted, and a small room would suffice… but he would prefer that it was near the Fire Lord’s. No, of course he trusted the hotel’s management to be vigilant—and the Fire Lord had his personal guard to keep him safe, if it came to that—but just in case… they were old war comrades, you see, and it was an instinct more than anything else. Quite irrational, of course, but could they humor him anyway? Anything for the Avatar, they said, and oh yes, the room next door would be perfect.</p><p>For now, it would hardly be suspicious if the old friends went to the Fire Lord’s suite, which included a comfortable sitting room, to catch up over an after-dinner pot of tea. If Ty Lee gave him a covert thumbs-up behind Zuko’s back as Aang walked past her through the doorway, or if Suki winked at him as he turned to close the door and exchanged a knowing smirk with the Kyoshi Warrior who had arrived to relieve her, who would notice?</p><p>Once the door was closed, Aang leaned his glider against a wall and checked the windows to make sure the curtains were drawn. Zuko turned to face him and opened his mouth to say something, but Aang didn’t wait to find out what it was before he pounced. The bulky, pointy shoulder-piece on the Fire Lord’s formal cloak made it impossible to throw his arms around Zuko the way he would have wanted to, so Aang settled for putting his hands on either side of his friend’s face to kiss him, deeply and fiercely.</p><p>Caught off guard, Zuko stumbled backward a step, but Aang followed that step, and the next one as he recovered his balance, like a practiced dance partner. Zuko brought his arms to rest around Aang’s waist, then let his hands drift up his back, and Aang shuddered at the gentle pressure of Zuko’s fingers over his bare shoulder. He let his own fingers skate over Zuko’s cheekbones and thread into his pulled-back hair—and was it wrong that a surge of warmth filled his chest when he felt the difference in texture, velvety unmarked skin under the fingertips of his left hand, the strangely smooth grooves and ridges of scar tissue under his right?</p><p>Aang started backing Zuko toward the couch, and he went along until his legs hit it, when he pulled away—for air, first of all, but also to discuss the situation before it progressed any further.</p><p>“I was about to ask if you wanted any tea, but I guess not,” Zuko joked, panting slightly, with a crooked half-smile.</p><p>Aang laughed, a little breathless himself. “You brew an excellent pot of tea, Your Fieriness, but that’s not what I came here for.”</p><p>“And not for my conversation either, apparently…”</p><p>“We’ve been talking all day, and we’ll have two more full days to talk! I haven’t seen you in three months…”</p><p>“Katara didn’t jump me as soon as we were alone,” Zuko pointed out, needling him a little.</p><p>“…and I haven’t kissed you in <em>six</em> months.”</p><p>“And before that you spent four years not kissing me. I know you’re capable of it.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to! I thought our agreement meant I didn’t have to hold myself back anymore.”</p><p>Zuko chuckled, still with that wry little smile. “You were ‘holding yourself back’ for four years, were you?”</p><p>He was making a joke, and he thought Aang was joking too, or speaking carelessly. “Just about,” Aang said, his face and tone completely serious.</p><p>The smile faded. “So you’re saying… how long have you wanted to…?”</p><p>“I don’t know if I wanted to <em>kiss </em>you, precisely… I’m not sure what I wanted. But I’ve wanted <em>something </em>since I took off the Blue Spirit’s mask and found it was you underneath.”</p><p>Zuko was looking troubled now. “Not just to be friends?”</p><p>“That too, but… it was more powerful than that. More… visceral.”</p><p>“Aang… you were twelve. I was sixteen, and I’d been chasing you all over the world. Are you sure you weren’t just… confused?”</p><p>“Of course I was confused! I was scared of you, and I admired you, and then this mysterious masked stranger saved me from Zhao, and they were as quick and graceful as an airbender but they weren’t bending at all, and we worked so <em>well </em>together, and I had so much adrenaline pumping through my veins that I was probably in love with them before I’d even seen their face… and then it turned out to be <em>you</em>, and somehow it made all the sense in the world. So yeah, I was confused, <em>and </em>I wanted to kiss you. And I still wanted to kiss you when I woke up in a cave at the North Pole. And maybe I also wanted to punch you when I found you with Katara in Ba Sing Se, but it was still confusing.”</p><p>Zuko’s mouth was open, his right eye was wide, and he was shaking his head. “That can’t be… I thought you must hate me. You <em>should </em>have hated me.”</p><p>“Air Nomads aren’t supposed to hate anyone… though I make an exception for your father.” Zuko twitched a smile at that. “But even if I had… I don’t think hating someone is mutually exclusive with wanting to kiss them.”</p><p>“That’s really not a healthy basis for a relationship…”</p><p>“I know that. So it’s a good thing I like you now!” Aang gave him an exaggerated grin.</p><p>“You were <em>twelve</em>,” Zuko repeated, shaking his head again.</p><p>“And you were sixteen. It’s not like I was going to act on it, okay? It’s normal for kids to have crushes on older kids, isn’t it?”</p><p>“I guess… I was never around older kids much, except for my cousin. I was pretty isolated, growing up in the palace.”</p><p>“There were kids of all ages at the Air Temples, and I met kids of all ages traveling around the world. I told you about my friend Kuzon, the firebender? He was a couple years older than me…”</p><p>“Don’t tell me you had a crush on him and then just… projected it onto me,” Zuko said, though something in his uneasy smile said he might have been more comfortable with that explanation.</p><p>“Definitely not. He looks— looked nothing like you. And his personality was very different from yours.”</p><p>Zuko self-consciously ran his fingers over his scar at the words <em>‘looked nothing like you.’ </em>“No, I don’t just mean that,” Aang said gently, and Zuko quickly took his hand away from his face, as if he hadn’t even realized he was doing it.</p><p>“I don’t understand how anyone could have been attracted to me back then,” Zuko said with a nervous laugh. “I was an angry, obsessive, sleepless wreck. And my hair looked <em>awful</em>.” He left implicit what he’d told Aang before the first time they kissed: that he hadn’t thought anyone would ever want him again with half his face marred by fire.</p><p>“Aww, it wasn’t that bad! You know I’m accustomed to baldness,” Aang said, running a hand over his own smooth, hairless head.</p><p>“But bald with a tail? It’s a symbol of shame and defeat. It’s <em>supposed </em>to look terrible.”</p><p>“Would it be insensitive to say that you wore it well?” Aang moved in to kiss him again, but Zuko dodged, putting up a hand to stall him.</p><p>“Let’s… slow down for a bit, shall we? I need… I need to process all this. And take off this stupid cloak,” he added. He did that first, and set it down on a side table, and while he was at it unbuckled the leather vambraces around his wrists. “Are you sure you don’t want tea?”</p><p>“Tea is fine. Tea is good,” Aang said brightly, trying to hide his disappointment and the growing anxiety that he had severely mucked this up. He sat down on the couch, then twisted around to watch while Zuko bustled around, filling the teapot, heating it with a focused breath, sorting through the boxes of tea leaves that the hotel provided (Cranefish Town was becoming positively civilized!).</p><p>“Black, green, jasmine, ginseng…?”</p><p>“Jasmine tea sounds good.”</p><p>Zuko brought the brewing teapot and one cup to the low table in front of the couch. Aang smiled his thanks, then turned to see what Zuko was going to do with the other teacup. He was not surprised when Zuko dug a bottle of plum brandy out of his luggage and poured a measure into the remaining cup, but it did make him a little sad, and again a little disappointed.</p><p>Zuko came back with his teacup of brandy and sat on the other end of the couch, carefully keeping some distance. He tilted the cup, looked into it thoughtfully, and took a long, slow sip before he said anything.</p><p>Zuko’s silence was making Aang antsy. “Listen, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. Can we just… forget what I said? It doesn’t have to change anything.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Zuko said, still staring into his cup rather than looking at Aang. “It sort of changes things for me.”</p><p>“You’re not—taking advantage of me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m the one who keeps ‘jumping’ you, as you put it.”</p><p>“I know… but I haven’t exactly been pushing you away.” He drank some more brandy from his teacup.</p><p>“Why should you? I’m sixteen—almost seventeen, now. That’s how old the Avatar usually is when they take up their duties. It’s how old you were when you <em>assumed the throne of the Fire Nation</em>, for Heaven’s sake. And you were sixteen when you first had sex with Mai, weren’t you?”</p><p>“Yes, but… she’s half a year younger than I am. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing; we were figuring it out together.”</p><p>“And Katara and I have done enough of <em>that </em>to know that we’re lucky to have you, so we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.”</p><p>Zuko rubbed his hand over his face. Aang had noticed that he did that when he was thinking about something that made him uncomfortable. He was especially prone to rubbing the skin around his left eye. Aang wondered if it still itched or felt tight even now, seven years on, or if it was just a habit he had picked up back when the scar was new.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Zuko, his hand still covering his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking of you as that twelve-year-old, asking ‘Do you think we could have been friends, too?’ It was so earnest, and so innocent, and part of me felt like a monster trying to capture you after that, but I still believed I had no choice… I’ve been trying not to make the connection between you now and you back then. Obviously a lot has happened since then, and I thought it was only <em>this </em>version of you, the sixteen-year-old you, that had these feelings for me. But knowing that <em>that </em>you had the same feelings…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely to the right as if into the past.</p><p>“They’re not <em>the same </em>feelings,” Aang protested. “When I was twelve, I definitely wasn’t thinking about anything beyond kissing, if I was even thinking that far.”</p><p>“Maybe not, but you made it sound like they were… continuous. Like there wasn’t a childish crush that ended, and then different feelings that started again later, but the same crush that developed over time into something more grown-up.”</p><p>“Would it really make a difference which one it was?” Aang asked seriously.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Zuko groaned, his voice muffled now that he was pressing his face into both hands. "I don’t know. Maybe it shouldn’t matter. But it seems to. I can’t… I can’t kiss you thinking of you as that twelve-year-old, much less… anything else.”</p><p>“But I’m <em>not</em> a twelve-year-old—any more than I was six months ago, when you were perfectly happy to kiss me. I’m getting farther away from the twelve-year-old all the time.”</p><p>“Except that you just brought him closer again by saying you’ve been wanting to kiss me ever since you were twelve. It makes me wonder if what you feel for me now is <em>still</em> that child’s crush on the mysterious Blue Spirit who turned out to be the teenager who’d been hunting you since the South Pole. I would <em>never</em> have let you act on it then—well, it would have confused the shit out of me then, but let’s say you had tried something when I was your firebending teacher that summer. I would have shut it down <em>immediately</em>. But three and a half years later—barely—I was more than happy to let you try things. I welcomed it; I encouraged it. Now I’m wondering if I was wrong to.”</p><p>“Zuko, look at me.” He had been hunched over, mostly looking at the table, or at the cup that he would pick up and spin around restlessly before taking a sip between sentences, only occasionally casting a sideways glance over at Aang. He finally sat up straight again and looked at Aang full on, though his eyes kept drifting to the side as if holding eye contact was uncomfortable.</p><p>“I’m sixteen years old—seventeen in a few months. We’ve been friends for four years now. <em>I know you. </em>You’re not my mysterious rescuer or my determined pursuer anymore. I know who you are, and everything you’ve been through, and how hard you’ve worked to become who you are today. I know what kinds of tea you like, and what kinds you hate. I know you dump a ton of chili oil into anything that wasn’t cooked in the Fire Nation, because you think it has no flavor otherwise. I know you were really good at playing the tsungi horn, but your father thought it was a waste of time, so you stopped because at least he couldn’t hear you practicing with your dao. I know you love traditional Fire Nation dramas, and even a mediocre production of <em>Love Amongst the Dragons </em>can make you cry. I know you only yell at people because you’re stressed out, but it does make you feel better temporarily.” Aang flashed a small sympathetic smile and added silently, <em>And you’ve started drinking too much to calm yourself down when you’re stressed</em>; now was definitely not the time to say that out loud. “<em>That’s </em>the person I want to kiss now. That’s the person I want to— to make love with, at least eventually. And that’s who I want to keep spending time with and learning more about for the rest of my life.”</p><p>Zuko was looking down at his cup again instead of at Aang’s face; he had to duck his head, eyebrows raised significantly, to get Zuko to look back up at him. “That was quite a speech,” Zuko said with one side of his mouth quirked. “I feel like you should be asking me to marry you.”</p><p>“I mean… if it were possible to marry two people, and if it wouldn’t cause a huge international scandal…”</p><p>The side of Zuko’s mouth quirked a little higher. “I’m flattered, of course, but, well… you know.”</p><p>“International scandal.”</p><p>“I don’t even want to <em>try</em> to imagine what the reaction would be at home.”</p><p>“To which part?” Aang asked dryly.</p><p>“All of it. Getting involved with <em>two</em> foreigners, who both helped defeat the Fire Nation in the war, one of whom is also a man… a boy?” Zuko looked uncertain as he corrected himself, and covered it badly with a sardonic smile.</p><p>“So, which am I—man or boy?” Aang asked, quiet and serious again.</p><p>Zuko looked aside with a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know,” he said again. “Both? Neither? Depends on the day? But I feel like that’s true of me, too, so…” He made an exasperated growling sound in his throat and threw back the rest of the brandy in his cup.</p><p>Aang gently took the cup from him and set it down so that he could take Zuko’s hands into his own. He saw something lumpy under the tight-fitting end of the left sleeve of Zuko’s robe and reached a finger under it to confirm his suspicion as to what it was: the bracelet Aang had made for him and given him for his birthday six months ago, at the winter solstice, with carved wooden emblems of the four elements and the four Nations secured to the braided twine.</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Zuko said, acknowledging it. “I tie it loose enough to fit around my forearm above the vambrace, then it falls down my wrist when I take those off.”</p><p>“Do you wear it every day, or just when you’re going to see me?” Aang asked, teasing.</p><p>“Most days,” Zuko said, his cheeks reddening a little.</p><p>“A little like a betrothal necklace, then…”</p><p>Zuko pulled his hands away and tucked the bracelet back under his sleeve. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said shortly. “It’s a symbol of friendship. We’re friends first, before we’re anything else.”</p><p>“That’s true of me and Katara, too,” Aang pointed out gently. “That’s what any good marriage should be built on, isn’t it?”</p><p>Zuko’s right eye narrowed in suspicion. “Are you doing the ‘Avatar wisdom’ thing again?”</p><p>“Is it working?” Aang asked with an oh-so-innocent grin.</p><p>“You’re probably right, but I don’t see how a sixteen-year-old Air Nomad has any business dispensing wisdom about <em>marriage</em>, of all things.”</p><p>A twinge of pain shot through Aang’s chest. Of course Zuko knew that Air Nomads didn’t typically marry the way people of other Nations do. Two people might commit to each other for a period of years, then part amicably by mutual agreement; two or more people might live together for most of their lives, sometimes raising children, sometimes taking other lovers as desire dictated, with the blessing of their longer-term partners.</p><p>Zuko must have seen a hint of his pain cross his face, because he quickly reached for Aang’s hand and said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have joked about that. Especially being who <em>I </em>am…”</p><p>“It’s all right. It’s not your fault.” Aang had lost count of the number of times he had said that to Zuko. It even comforted him, sometimes, how much Zuko knew about his culture, even though he knew the only reason he had learned any of it was to be able to hunt the Avatar more effectively.</p><p>“Maybe you and the Air Acolytes can revive their customs around relationships,” Zuko said, with affected hopefulness. “They can show the rest of the Nations how many ways there are for people to love each other.”</p><p>“And eventually the world will be ready to accept us—you, me, and Katara?” Aang let the sadness in his tone and tiny smile communicate what he thought the answer was.</p><p>Zuko sighed. “Not in time for us to benefit from it. Maybe your successor can enjoy the fruit of your labor.”</p><p>“My successor?”</p><p>“The next Avatar.”</p><p>Aang looked at him blankly. What did the next Avatar have to do with anything?</p><p>Zuko answered the question he hadn’t asked aloud. “It’s a thing with Avatars—having two lovers, a man and a woman, often but not always their bending masters. Roku had Ta Min and Sozin; Kyoshi had Rangi and Jinpa; Kuruk had Hei-Ran and Jianzhu…”</p><p>Aang’s jaw dropped. “And you found this out from doing research on the Avatar to try to capture me?”</p><p>“Yep. I never thought it would be particularly useful, unless I could find the Avatar by finding his lovers, or ex-lovers…”</p><p>“Wow. Roku <em>and Sozin? </em>Really?”</p><p>“So the contemporary accounts strongly suggest, though of course after their falling-out Sozin, and later Azulon, tried to suppress them as much as possible.”</p><p>“Holy badger-moles.” Zuko rolled his eyes, as he often did, at Aang’s child-friendly oaths. “So you <em>can’t</em> turn me away,” Aang declared triumphantly. “We’re destined.”</p><p>“I said <em>but not always </em>their bending masters,” Zuko warned.</p><p>“Sure, but who else is my other partner going to be?”</p><p>“I don’t know. You’ll meet people. You don’t meet all the people who will ever be important in your life by the time you’re sixteen…”</p><p>Aang frowned; he wasn’t sure how much of this was joking and how much was serious. “Are you really saying you don’t want to… be with me?” <em>And what about you and Katara? </em>he wondered, but didn’t ask.</p><p>Zuko scrubbed his hand over his face again. He picked up his cup, forgetting it was empty—a nervous habit, probably. “I just… I just need some time to think.”</p><p>Aang felt like a balloon had been punctured in his chest. “Of course. I’ll— I’ll go then, shall I?”</p><p>“I think that’s probably best,” Zuko said softly, finally looking straight at him with an apology in his eyes, and any tentative hope Aang still had rushed like air out of the punctured balloon.</p><p>They both stood up from the couch. “It was good seeing you today,” Aang said awkwardly.</p><p>“I’ll see you again tomorrow,” Zuko pointed out. “And the day after that.” They still had arrangements to make for the Earth King’s visit: officials to talk to, meetings to schedule, a security team to coordinate with.</p><p>“I know, but… it’s true. It’s always good to see you.” Aang gave him a brief one-armed hug. Or it was meant to be brief, but Zuko held him in longer with a firm hand around the back of his neck.</p><p>“I’ll still love you, even if it’s not… that way,” Zuko murmured against his ear, and placed a light kiss on his temple.</p><p>“I know,” said Aang. The deflated balloon in his chest did… something, though he wasn’t sure whether it was reinflating a little or whether the last bit of air was being squeezed out.</p><p>Ty Lee was shocked to see him walk out the door of Zuko’s suite. “Aang? Is everything okay?” she fretted.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s fine,” Aang said with false cheerfulness. “We just… talked about some things and wanted to spend the night on our own to think them over.”</p><p>Ty Lee didn’t look convinced. “Well, you know you can always talk to me if you need to.”</p><p>“Maybe not in the hallway outside the Fire Lord’s hotel room door, though…”</p><p>Ty Lee’s fellow guard, Ayame, snorted softly. Ty Lee glared at her, which never looked particularly threatening.</p><p>“I think I just need to go for a walk. To clear my head,” Aang said.</p><p>“It’s getting dark out,” Ayame remarked. “Are you sure you’ll be safe alone? One of us can come with you…”</p><p>Aang waved her off. “No, I’ll be fine. You should stay here to protect the Fire Lord.” Zuko was probably at least marginally more vulnerable to assassination attempts here than Aang was…</p><p>“If you insist,” said Ayame. She and Ty Lee both looked dubious.</p><p>Aang left the hotel; he didn’t want to just sit in his own room and stew in his anxiety and self-reproach. Maybe he should take a walk, or take Appa out to the little island in the bay where he and Katara had found a brief, serene respite from Cranefish Town’s turbulent politics.</p><p>As soon as he was alone, though, he realized that he didn’t want to be. He would only end up replaying the conversation with Zuko in his head, torturing himself with the things he shouldn’t have said, picking apart all of Zuko’s words for signs of which way he would decide. He needed someone to take him out of his head. Katara was at the North Pole, though, and Sokka and Suki were… busy (in the way he had hoped he and Zuko might be). That left Toph, assuming she didn’t have other plans. He and Zuko had seen her earlier in the day, at her father’s refinery, and she hadn’t said anything about (say) a date with Satoru; but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one, just that she didn’t feel the need to share all the details of her life.</p><p>Toph was not the most comforting person to seek out after endangering a relationship by saying something stupid—and of course Aang would have to tell her what had happened; she would know if he was lying, even by omission. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, Aang reflected morosely. He unfolded his glider, kicked himself off the ground with a gust of air, and made his way toward Toph’s house near the refinery.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I wrote a dirty little <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671696">prequel</a> to this for a Zukaang zine, dramatizing Aang's fantasies about the Blue Spirit encounter.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Toph's Geology Lesson</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After getting kicked out of Zuko's room, Aang goes to see Toph, gets made fun of (as expected), practices sandbending, and gets some unexpectedly genuine advice, in the form of a geology lesson.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aang landed in front of Toph’s door, steeled himself, and knocked.</p><p>“That you, Twinkle-toes?” came Toph’s voice from inside.</p><p>Aang didn’t bother to answer; he knew that Toph didn’t actually need him to, and wouldn’t wait for an answer, anyway. Sure enough, she opened the door and greeted him with a smirk just a few seconds after she had called out.</p><p>“I didn’t expect to see <em>you </em>again this evening. Weren’t you supposed to be spending the night with His Royal Hotness?”</p><p>“Um. Well.” Aang cast his eyes down to the side and shifted on his feet. “I was, but…”</p><p>“Ooh, I smell a good story. Come in, I want to be sitting down for this.” She turned around to walk into the living room, expecting him to follow. “And I should get some snacks. You want a snack? Other than the one you’re missing, I mean…”</p><p>Aang shrank into himself, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders, as he trailed down the hallway after her. “I’m not really hungry.”</p><p>“Well, I am.” She poured a mix of spiced nuts, dried peas, and puffed rice into a bowl and crammed a handful into her mouth. “I think this story calls for a beverage, too,” she said through a full mouth. She opened a thick-sided stone chest designed to keep its contents cool, pulled out a half-consumed bottle of Fire Nation rice wine that she’d put the stopper back into, and poured some into an earthenware cup.</p><p>“You want anything to drink? I’ve got some lychee juice.”</p><p>Aang was strangely glad that she hadn’t offered him more tea. “Lychee juice sounds good, thanks.”</p><p>Toph sat down in a well-cushioned chair with her wine and snacks; Aang sat in a not-quite-as-well-cushioned chair across from her with his cup of juice. “So. Spill,” she said, as if she were asking for gossip about someone else.</p><p>Aang had no idea where to start or how to explain, so he went straight to the heart of the matter: “I screwed up,” he blurted out. He felt a thickness in his throat and a tingling in his nose that hinted he might start crying if he wasn’t careful.</p><p>“Yeah, I figured,” said Toph around another crunchy mouthful, with all the empathetic sensitivity he had expected from her. “What did you do?”</p><p>“It’s not so much something I <em>did </em>as something I <em>said</em>.”</p><p>“Okay, then. What did you <em>say?”</em></p><p>“I, um… I told him that I’d wanted to kiss him since I was twelve.”</p><p>Toph frowned, looking puzzled. “Why on earth would you tell him that?”</p><p>“I don’t know. It just sort of… came up?”</p><p>“Did he ask you how long you’d wanted to kiss him?” she asked in a slow, skeptical cadence.</p><p>“Not exactly. He was making fun of me for jumping on him as soon as the door was closed…”</p><p>Toph snorted. “You would.”</p><p>“…and I said it had been six months since I’d kissed him, and he said I’d gone four years without kissing him, and I said that didn’t mean I didn’t want to. He thought I was joking but I said I wasn’t.”</p><p>Toph whistled her amazement. “And how did he take <em>that?”</em></p><p>“Not great. He said he couldn’t kiss me or… anything else while thinking about me when I was twelve.”</p><p>“I mean, understandable. You were an obnoxious little twerp. Even more than you are now,” Toph added.</p><p>“Thanks,” Aang said dryly.</p><p>“But everyone we kiss, or bang, was an obnoxious twerp once. Even Zuko. You just have to… not think about it.”</p><p>“Yeah, it wasn’t just talking about being twelve. It was… he worried that my feelings for him were the same ones I had when I was twelve and he was sixteen. Not that I want the same things—there were definitely some things I <em>wasn’t </em>thinking about when I was twelve—but that I’m still thinking about him as this mysterious, dangerous, much older boy.”</p><p>“Dangerous and mysterious?” Toph repeated, her brow creased with incredulity. “How about painfully awkward and trying <em>way</em> too hard to be liked?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s not… it wasn’t when he was my firebending teacher. I mean, I hadn’t <em>stopped</em> wanting to kiss him then, but that’s not when it started.”</p><p>Toph’s eyebrows disappeared under her hair. <em>“Oh.”</em></p><p>“Yeah. It started when he rescued me from Pohuai Stronghold as the Blue Spirit.”</p><p>“Ooh, kinky. Got a thing for masks, Twinkle-toes?”</p><p>“What? No, I didn’t want to kiss him <em>with the mask on</em>.”</p><p>“But you wanted to kiss whoever was under it.”</p><p>“Maybe… but I definitely did when I saw that it was <em>him</em>.”</p><p>Toph paused while bringing her cup to her mouth. “Remind me what you knew about him at the time…?”</p><p>“I knew he was about fifteen or sixteen, he was a prince of the Fire Nation, and he really, really wanted to capture me. The Avatar, that is. I wasn’t completely sure why at that point… Zhao called him a traitor, and he told Katara he needed to restore his honor, but none of us really knew what any of that was about. But he attacked Katara and Sokka’s village the day after they found me in the iceberg, and he kept chasing me up the coast of the Earth Kingdom for like… months.”</p><p>“Didn’t he burn down Suki’s village or something…?”</p><p>“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t just him—he had some firebending soldiers, too—and he didn’t burn it <em>down</em>, I managed to put it out…”</p><p>“Not really the point, Aang.”</p><p>If she was using his real name, that disapproving look was serious. “No, you’re right.”</p><p>“So this fifteen-or-sixteen-year-old has been chasing you for months, trying to take you prisoner, destroying whole villages in the process. And you wanted to kiss him… because he put on a mask and saved you from being taken prisoner by someone else?”</p><p>“He was <em>really </em>impressive with the mask and the swords. He didn’t use firebending at all! He could practically climb walls!”</p><p>“Okay… but you said you didn’t want to kiss him until <em>after </em>he took the mask off.”</p><p>“He didn’t… he got knocked out and I looked to see who it was.”</p><p>“It just kind of got kinky again.”</p><p>“<em>I was twelve, Toph. </em>Twelve-year-olds don’t have kinks.”</p><p>“Are you sure? ’Cause it kind of sounds like you had a ‘redeemable enemy’ kink.”</p><p>Aang opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just closed it again.</p><p>Toph <em>hmph</em>ed smugly in response to his silence. “Yeah, I can see why Zuko is worried. We all have stupid crushes when we’re twelve, but most of us don’t hang onto them for years and then get the opportunity to act on them…”</p><p>Aang was starting to feel nauseous. He hadn’t exactly expected sympathy from Toph, but he also hadn’t expected her to side with Zuko. “But… it’s <em>not </em>the same crush. I <em>know </em>him now—the awkward and trying-too-hard Zuko. He hasn’t been ‘dangerous and mysterious’ in a long time. At least not any more dangerous than any of us are… <em>you’re </em>probably more dangerous than he is.”</p><p>Toph inclined her head in gracious acknowledgment. “Well, good luck with that,” she said, taking a swig of wine to wash down another mouthful of spiced nuts.</p><p>“I don’t suppose you have any… advice?” Aang asked, without much hope.</p><p>“Oh, I am the <em>wrong</em> person to ask for relationship advice. You should have gone to Sokka or Suki if that’s what you wanted.”</p><p>“Yeah… they weren’t available.”</p><p>Toph cackled. “Of course not. Sucks to be you…”</p><p>“Thanks,” Aang said again, resignedly. Why had he thought this was a good idea again…? “Look, I just need a distraction. Can we go practice earthbending or something…?”</p><p>“Really? You <em>want </em>me to beat your ass?”</p><p>Aang sighed. “Why not?”</p><p>“Since you aren’t getting your ass beat any other way…”</p><p>Aang felt heat rush suddenly into his face. “Toph, that’s not what I… what we… we’re not there yet, okay?”</p><p>She held up her hands. “Joke, Twinkle-toes. I really don’t want to know what you and Sparky get up to in bed… or don’t.”</p><p>“Good. So, do you want to beat me up with earthbending or not?”</p><p>“I am <em>always</em> up for a good beatdown. Let’s go to the beach and work on your sandbending, huh? You’re still not great at that.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know, it needs work. Thanks, Toph.”</p><p>“What are friends for?” she asked, and punched his shoulder on the way to put her dishes back in the kitchen.</p><p>They made their way down to the beach. The sun had long set, but the moon was bright enough to see by—not that any of that mattered to Toph.</p><p>“Okay, Mr. Avatar, let’s see what you can do,” she said, arms folded in a pose of challenge.</p><p>Aang planted his feet, knees bent, weight centered low. He lifted his upturned palms as if to raise a squared-off column of stone. He managed to raise a mound of wet sand, but with no particular shape. It slumped down partway as soon as he released his hold on it.</p><p>Toph raised her eyebrows. “What was <em>that </em>supposed to be?”</p><p>“Um… I think it was supposed to be a column… but you can’t really make a column of sand, can you?”</p><p>“You <em>can</em>, but you have to remember that it’s sand.” She demonstrated, raising a trapezoidal mound that was wider at the base than the top. It did not collapse when she relaxed her hands and stepped out of her bending stance.</p><p>Aang sighed. “Why <em>is </em>sand so much harder than normal earth?”</p><p>“The size of the grain,” Toph answered immediately: evidently she had given this some thought. She bent to scoop up a handful of sand and let it run back through her fingers, the stream of falling sand blown diagonal by the breeze from the ocean.</p><p>“You mean, the grains are too small?”</p><p>“No. They’re too… medium-sized.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Grains of sand are smaller than gravel, but bigger than the grains of clay, mud, or soil.” She took a few steps down to the edge of the water, crouched, and picked up a handful of minuscule polished pebbles, then let them fall back into the water, their soft splashes lost in the roaring of the waves. “Gravel is easy: it’s obviously just a bunch of tiny rocks; it behaves like a bunch of tiny rocks.”</p><p>She stood and strode back away from the water toward where Aang was standing. “Clay and mud are easy, too. The grains are so small that they stick together when they’re just a little bit damp and they behave like a single mass, so you can treat it like an equivalent mass of rock. Actually, it’s easier than rock, because you can cut into it anywhere; you don’t have to feel around for where it’ll crack along the seams.”</p><p>Toph picked up another handful of sand and held onto it, shifting it around in her palm, rather than letting it fall. “Sand is in… the opposite of the sweet spot. The sour spot? The grains are too small to feel just like little rocks—they stick together more than that, especially when they’re wet—but too big to form a unified mass, like clay or mud. So sometimes you can treat a mass of sand like clay or mud, but sometimes you have to think of it as tiny rocks. Sometimes both at the same time. Like with this—” she gestured toward the trapezoidal solid she had raised— “I thought of the center as a single mass, but at the edges I thought of it as little rocks to get them to stay put and not fall back down the sides.”</p><p>“Argh, that sounds hard.”</p><p>“Damn right it's hard, Twinkle-toes. Sandbending is hard. So is metalbending, and lightning-bending. So is being the Avatar. Suck it up.”</p><p>“Do you always have to be consciously thinking about it—whether to treat it like mud or rocks? Or does it eventually become automatic?”</p><p>“You do get a feel for it after a while. You learn to sort of hover in the intermediate space and shift in one direction or the other as needed.”</p><p>“Okay,” Aang said, settling into the earthbending stance and regarding the sand at his feet with determination. “Let’s do this.”</p><p>He tried again to raise a trapezoidal column like Toph’s. As before, he thought of most of it as a solid mass, like rock or soil, but once the base was raised, he started thinking about the grains on the top and sides as little rocks, telling them to stay in the same squarish formation that Toph had made. But as soon as he did, he lost his hold on the mass making up the core of the column, and the whole thing collapsed even more spectacularly than his first attempt had.</p><p>He growled in frustration and kicked the lump of sand in front of him. “Why can’t it just make up its mind to be one thing or the other?”</p><p>Toph folded her arms again and made an unimpressed face in his general direction. “This isn’t really about sandbending, is it? This is about Zuko.”</p><p>“Of course it’s about Zuko!” he snapped at her and kicked the mound of sand again, completely flattening what was left of his failure to sandbend.</p><p>“So much for wanting a distraction…”</p><p>“I did! I just… can’t stop thinking about it. Even though I really, really wish I could.” Aang rubbed his eyes with his palms and breathed in deeply through his nose.</p><p>“So let’s talk about it.” Toph plopped down in the sand with her legs stretched out in front of her, leaning back on her palms. “I probably can’t give you much in the way of advice, but I can listen. And try to refrain from mocking you.”</p><p>“Thanks, I appreciate it,” Aang said wryly. He sat half-lotus facing her.</p><p>“So. Why is sand making you think about Zuko? Other than the rough sexy voice, of course. And being hard to pin down…”</p><p>Aang sighed his annoyance at her because of course she couldn’t see his glare. “Because I asked him whether he saw me as a man or a boy and he couldn’t give me a straight answer.”</p><p>“What did he say?”</p><p>“‘Both. Neither. Depends on the day.’”</p><p>Toph let out a loud bark of laughter. “That’s just life, though, isn’t it?”</p><p>“But I’m <em>not</em> a kid anymore. I’m not the kid with a weird crush on his enemy. Why can’t he see that?”</p><p>“I mean… you did say you’d been wanting to kiss him <em>ever since</em> then. So you kinda dug your own grave there, airhead.”</p><p>Aang groan-sighed and buried his face in his hands. “You're right. I’m an idiot.”</p><p>“No arguments from me.”</p><p>“Toph…” he half-whined.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry,” she said, hands raised in conciliation. “So, how are we going to get you out of this hole you’ve dug and back in Sparky’s pants—I mean, good graces?”</p><p>Aang looked up. “Really? You want to help me? What about your ‘field trip’?”</p><p>“Eh, it was always a pretty remote possibility… and who’s to say it can’t still happen? Since you three are all field-tripping with each other.”</p><p>“It’s not a completely open… oh, never mind.”</p><p>“All right, you need to convince Zuko that <em>he’s</em> not being creepy because <em>you </em>don’t still have the creepy villain-worship crush that your twelve-year-old self had on sixteen-year-old him. Do I have that right?”</p><p>Aang sighed heavily. “Yeah.” He certainly wouldn’t have put it that way, but if the shoe fit…</p><p>“But he knows that you never stopped having a crush on him, from the Blue Spirit rescue until this very day.” She paused to think about what she’d just said. “Seriously? You <em>never </em>stopped? Even after he betrayed his uncle and helped his sister attack us? You know, his sister who <em>nearly killed you?”</em></p><p>Aang looked down and started idly drawing designs with a stick in the damp sand under him. “Well… I wasn’t really thinking about him that much. I was mostly thinking about how I failed to save the Earth Kingdom, and I had so little time before the eclipse and then the comet… and I was busy falling head-over-heels in love with Katara. Then we didn’t see him again until the Western Air Temple, when he wanted to help us.”</p><p>“But you didn’t trust him at first. I was the only one who did.”</p><p>Aang didn’t answer right away, still doodling a winged lemur in the sand. “I wanted to,” he said at last. “Katara and Sokka convinced me I shouldn’t. But I saw him and it all came rushing back… the Blue Spirit and the North Pole and the way he screamed at us when Azula hurt Uncle Iroh with her lightning. He just seemed… lost.”</p><p>“Wow. Talk about redeemable enemy kink…”</p><p>“Everyone deserves a second chance!” Aang insisted huffily.</p><p>“Especially if they’re hot…”</p><p>“Jet managed to redeem himself,” Aang pointed out.</p><p>“…not a counterexample, or so I’m given to understand.”</p><p>“Fine. Everyone deserves a second chance, and I <em>especially </em>wanted Zuko to succeed at his because he’s pretty. You happy now?”</p><p>“Not exactly. You’re really not giving me much to work with here.”</p><p>Aang let out another frustrated growl. “Why is it so hard to convince people that <em>I’m not my twelve-year old self anymore?  </em>Yeah, I started out with a crush on Zuko because he was impressive and talented and determined and brave and I knew there was something in him that was worth giving a chance, I just <em>knew </em>it… and sure, the cheekbones didn’t hurt.”</p><p>“Unless you cut yourself on them…” Toph muttered.</p><p>Aang ignored her and charged on. “And you know what? All that is still true, and that’s still part of why I like him—why I <em>love </em>him—but there’s <em>so much more </em>than that now. He’s taken his second chance and run with it. He’s saved our lives and risked <em>his </em>life and worked <em>so hard </em>to do the right thing. And it turns out he’s not just a talented firebender and swordsman and ninja-spy-acrobat-thing; he’s also kind of a goofball and a <em>huge</em> theater nerd with a weakness for drama in real life. He’s socially awkward, does dumb impulsive stuff, and can’t tell a joke to save his life. He's completely ridiculous <em>and</em> completely amazing. I don’t hero-worship <em>or</em> ‘villain-worship’ him anymore; he’s my actual, honest-to-Wan Shi Tong hero.”</p><p>Toph hummed thoughtfully. “So,” she began slowly after a long pause, “there are three basic types of rocks.”</p><p>Aang groaned. “Please tell me this is actually relevant…”</p><p>“Hey, I’m trying to give you some real advice! It’s a rare occurrence, so pay attention.”</p><p>“Yes, Sifu Toph,” Aang said, chastened.</p><p>“Imagine I’m Uncle Iroh, if that helps. There are three basic types of rocks,” she repeated, speaking the Earth Kingdom lingua franca in a bad imitation of Iroh’s old-fashioned Fire Nation accent.</p><p>Aang winced. “You really don’t need to do the voice…”</p><p>“Fine. Three types of rocks. Igneous rocks are formed from cooled lava. Sedimentary rocks are formed from smaller stuff getting smushed together, like sand or mud or seashells or dead leaves ’n’ shit. And then there are metamorphic rocks, which are what happens when rocks of the other two types are subjected to extreme heat or pressure. Maybe they come into contact with hot magma underground; or maybe they get squished between two tectonic plates, over thousands of years.”</p><p>“Okay… I’m guessing metaphoric— I mean, metamorphic rocks are the important ones here?”</p><p>“Good guess, O Wise Avatar. Metamorphic rocks are interesting because they preserve some of the characteristics of the igneous or sedimentary rocks they were before. The basic components don’t usually change—I mean the little crystals, the very smallest bits of the rock. But the structure of the rock, the way the small bits are configured, can change a lot. If the crystals are sort of oblong, they might all align in the same direction instead of going every which way—that’s what happens when shale turns into slate. Or sometimes the little crystals will crystallize together into bigger crystals, like when limestone becomes marble.”</p><p>“But the basic building-blocks are the same as in the old rock? It’s just the configuration that changes?”</p><p>“Usually… but not always. Sometimes new minerals get in and combine with the old ones. And there are some types of crystals that can <em>only </em>form in the high temperature and pressure where rock metamorphism happens. Diamonds are the ones everyone knows about, but garnets are another one—you usually find them in mountains where two tectonic plates crashed together. But when I say ‘crashed’ I mean very, very slowly.” She brought her flattened hands together with theatrical slowness, palm-down and sideways, then when her thumbs met, she made a low-pitched explosion noise with her mouth and slid the edge of one hand gradually on top of the other, emphasizing the friction between them.</p><p>“How do you <em>know </em>all this?” Aang asked admiringly. He could never remember this much theoretical information about his own element… or, well, anything.</p><p>“Twinkle-toes… my family are rich, status-conscious, social-climbing merchants. I was too ‘blind and helpless’ to learn earthbending, but by Oma and Shu I was going to learn everything else… and as I’m sure you can imagine, geology is the most prestigious science in the Earth Kingdom. My parents could afford to spend a fortune on tutors, and they did. I couldn’t learn things by reading books, so they had to pay my tutors to tell me everything in lectures, or read their books to me. All my exams were oral, of course, so I got really, really good at explaining this shit. And you know what else? <em>It’s useful. </em>There’s a lot I can do with rocks just by sensing, but knowing something about them—what they’re made of, where they came from—really expands the possibilities.”</p><p>“Oh.” Aang silently resolved to try to pay attention next time some crusty old academic from the University of Ba Sing Se was explaining something to him. “Okay, so, back to the metaphor—er, the analogy: am I the metamorphic rock in this scenario?”</p><p>“Ha, aren’t we all? We start out as one thing, then life subjects us to heat and pressure and changes us into something else. Almost always harder and less flexible, usually stronger, often more likely to break in particular ways, along specific fault-lines.”</p><p>Aang blinked, taken aback. “Wow. That was… uncharacteristically poetic, for you.”</p><p>“Hey, I have unsuspected depths. Much like the center of the earth. It goes <em>so far down</em>, you have no idea.” She cleared her throat, steering herself back on-topic.</p><p>“But anyway… the metamorphic rock in this situation is your feelings for Zuko. It started out as one kind of thing, but then heat and pressure over time turned it into something else. Like two tectonic plates slowly crashing together.” She repeated the demonstration with her hands, explosion noise and all, but somewhat speeded-up. “And maybe some of its basic make-up is the same as it originally was—you can’t <em>entirely </em>escape what you started as—but it’s been restructured so radically that it’s fundamentally a different kind of rock… I mean, relationship. And maybe it’s got some garnets in it, I don’t know.”</p><p>“Wow, that’s… wow.” Aang sat in awe of Toph’s analogical skills.</p><p>“You’re welcome, Mr. Avatar,” said Toph, standing up and dusting the sand off her clothes. “That’ll be fifty gold pieces.”</p><p>“Very funny.” Aang also stood up, picked up his glider from where it lay beside him, and also brushed himself off before they started walking back up the beach.</p><p>“You think I’m joking? Advice from Toph Beifong is a rare and <em>very </em>precious commodity.”</p><p>“Uncle Iroh never charges for advice,” Aang pointed out.</p><p>“That’s ’cause he’s a sucker. He’s missing out on a <em>huge </em>opportunity for profit.”</p><p>“Really, though… thank you, Toph.” Aang laid a hand on her shoulder, which she quickly brushed off with a dismissive <em>pffft</em>, though the edges of her lips were curving upward. “I owe you.”</p><p>“Damn right you do. And I’ll be sending you an invoice.”</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Dynamic metamorphism is the kind that happens at the edge of two tectonic plates, as opposed to contact metamorphism, which is when a rock comes into contact with magma underground.</p><p>I apologize if any of the geology stuff is inaccurate; I gave myself a crash course in it on the internet, mostly Wikipedia.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Zuko's Dilemma</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Zuko reflects on his relationship with Aang and makes a decision; after they spend the day working together, Aang makes his case that Zuko shouldn't let Aang's twelve-year-old crush determine his understanding of Aang's feelings for him now.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Switching to Zuko's POV because a few readers have said it's hard to get a sense of his feelings. You wanted to know about his feelings, he asks? Here, have 2000 words of his feelings.</p><p>Never believe my initial estimated chapter counts. They are always wrong.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Aang left, Zuko got up to pour himself another cup of brandy (perhaps larger than strictly advisable), then went back to the sitting room. He sat down not on the couch where he had been talking to Aang, but in a chair against the side wall of the room, staring at the side of the couch as if a spectator on his just-past self.</p><p>He’d said he needed to think, and he did, but he really didn’t want to. Part of him wanted to get too drunk to think, but he knew he needed to play dignified head of state tomorrow, and he would be much less convincing in the role while fighting a hangover. Just this one more drink, and then he would go to bed. Things always seemed better in the morning… his uncle had often told him that, and so had Aang. But in the morning he would have to see Aang again, and they had work to do together to make Aang’s dream—<em>their </em>dream—a real possibility. So he needed to sort out his feelings <em>now</em>, like the adult he was supposed to be, instead of fleeing from them either in drink or in sleep.</p><p>Zuko loved Aang, of course—loved him, admired him, was immeasurably grateful to him for extending trust before Zuko could ever have hoped to deserve it, for giving him the second chance he needed to work for redemption. Aang’s seemingly endless capacity for forgiveness and mercy flummoxed him sometimes, and sometimes frustrated him (his life really would have been easier if Aang had just killed Ozai). But mostly it filled him with awe, with envy as well as gratitude—but the good kind of envy, the kind that burned rather than poisoned, that made him want passionately to be better, to emulate that merciful, forgiving nature in whatever measure he could.</p><p>But before Aang had kissed him—was it already eight months ago, now?—Zuko truly had never thought of him as a romantic, let alone a sexual partner. Part of it was, of course, because of Aang’s youth and the difference in age between them, but that was far from the only reason. No, mostly it was because he had never imagined that Aang might want <em>him</em>—either of them, Aang or Katara.</p><p>They were a couple straight out of a spirit tale or a romantic drama: the long-lost hero of legend, trapped in an enchanted sleep for a hundred years, until he was awakened by a brave, compassionate, pure-hearted young girl who had been nurturing the flame of hope during the darkest years of his absence. She had helped and guided him through his journey to come into his full powers, had never left his side, had even brought him back to life when he was struck down by his enemies. They were clearly destined to be together; all the laws of nature and principles of storytelling demanded it.</p><p>What place could there be, in such a romance, for the flawed, compromised former villain who had been saved by their grace—first his soul, by the hero, then his life, by the heroine? It was enough that he lived to continue to work off his debt to them, and to the world. What more could he possibly ask of them, what more could he hope for?</p><p>And then they had asked something of <em>him</em>. And as long as nothing he did could damage <em>their </em>relationship—which he had been very careful to verify—who was he to refuse? That they, these perfect heroes of legend, wanted <em>him</em>, said they loved him, invited him into their mythic love story… it was more than he had ever dared to imagine. (And when Katara had said that they fought sometimes, that a fight might someday break them apart… Zuko had pushed it to the side; it had no place in the world he understood.)</p><p>He knew this could only be temporary. He knew they would marry, have children to restore the imperiled legacies of airbending and Southern waterbending, and live happily ever after as such heroes did. And he knew that he would have to marry, too—some prim, demure Fire Nation noblewoman from an arrogant house, to shore up his support with the nobility whose interests he had slighted—and father an heir, and live… resignedly ever after with a family he hadn’t chosen. Would they still have time for him while raising the hope of a future for their all-but-destroyed nations? Would he have time for them while trying to secure <em>his </em>nation’s future, to protect and build on the foundations he had laid for a new, peaceable, generous and righteous Fire Nation?</p><p>But he had wanted to be able to enjoy his good fortune while he had it. He had been lonely since Mai left; he allowed himself to acknowledge it once he had been granted some partial relief. Partial, always partial: he was, as he had said to Katara, a comet in a sharply elliptical orbit around their twin suns. When he passed close to them, once a season or so, some of the loneliness of his long solitary orbit was soothed… but in a way, too, it was sharpened, when he was reminded of what he was missing, and what he would never have.</p><p>He had known that Aang was young, of course he had known; but when Aang had first kissed him, he was, as he had pointed out, no younger than Zuko had been when he had taken on the burden of rule… and, yes, when he and Mai had begun sleeping together. (Recklessly, in retrospect; it was due more to luck than to their forethought and caution that they had not had to take drastic action to remove, conceal, or legitimize the consequences.) Surely Aang was old enough to know what he wanted, and against all odds, he wanted Zuko. Lonely, grateful, loving him already and willing to let his love take a new form, Zuko had welcomed Aang’s desire and found himself returning it. (It was more natural, perhaps, with Katara—not only because his upbringing had taught him to be ashamed of his desire for others of his own sex, but because his sixteen-year-old self had already indulged guilty fantasies about her, the powerful, strong-willed young woman who had threatened to kill him and then saved his life.)</p><p>Now all of that was endangered—the balm for his loneliness first of all, but also his understanding of how he fit into Aang’s life. That Aang admired <em>him</em>, looked up to <em>him</em>—in any context other than as his firebending teacher, anyway—barely made sense to him even now. That Aang had admired him <em>then</em>, when all that Zuko deserved from him was fear and loathing, was beyond comprehension. But that he had felt not only admiration, but <em>attraction</em>…</p><p>Zuko put down his cup and buried his face in his hands. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh, cry, or scream; maybe all three… but then his guards would surely be alarmed and come to check on him, which he didn’t want to deal with. He wasn’t a good enough liar to tell them convincingly that everything was all right.</p><p>Was that all this was, after all—the misplaced attraction of a confused, traumatized twelve-year-old child, torn away from the world and the people he knew and thrown without warning into a new world that he didn’t understand? Zuko’s was a familiar face to him, at least; didn’t it make a kind of twisted sense that, grasping for something, anything to hold onto in a sea of unfamiliarity, he should be drawn to the two constants in his life: the girl who believed in him, and the boy who hunted him?</p><p>That would even explain why he had begun to feel the attraction when he had taken off the Blue Spirit’s mask and found Zuko. He had just been through a frightening ordeal—unusually frightening, even in the context of his whole terrifying situation—and gone through it with this stranger; they had been brought close by their mutual dependence for survival and escape, forced to cling together, close enough to feel each other’s racing heartbeat. That would be enough already to produce the illusion of attraction (as Aang had acknowledged); but then he had uncovered the stranger’s face and found <em>someone he knew</em>. What did it matter that he knew Zuko only as his enemy?</p><p>It amazed him to think that the same experience could have such different meanings for the two who had shared it. Shame always crawled into the pit of Zuko’s stomach whenever he recalled opening bleary eyes to find the Avatar crouching above him, having kept vigil over him through the gray dawn hours. It was Zuko’s first glimpse into the depths of Aang’s capacity for compassion and forgiveness, and the first time he not only suspected but really <em>felt </em>that his mission might not, after all, be virtuous. <em>“Do you think we could have been friends, too?” </em>the little airbender had asked, with that sad, hopeful smile… and then Zuko had punched a gout of fire at him, still trying desperately to capture him even when he knew he had no chance. But the question had haunted him for months afterward. It echoed in his head as he lay sleepless in his cabin; as he watched over Aang’s insensate body in a cave at the North Pole, their places curiously reversed; as he rode away from a desert town in the Earth Kingdom with jeers of hate ringing in his ears; as he flew a stolen war balloon to the Western Air Temple to find out the answer. Aang’s question was the key to a door that, Zuko realized later, his uncle had been struggling to pry open for years. Zuko was ashamed that it had taken so long… but so, so grateful to Aang for opening the door that little crack he needed to be able, at last, to walk through it himself.</p><p>But what had Aang been thinking through all those hours he had waited for Zuko to awaken? That he couldn’t leave him to be found by Zhao and his soldiers, of course… but had he been watching his unconscious enemy all that time and thinking about what it would be like to kiss him? And now he remembered the encounter not (or not only) as when he had extended to Zuko the first tentative offer of pardon and trust, opening the door that would finally lead to his redemption, but as when he had begun wanting to kiss him.</p><p>Had he never stopped wanting to, in all that time? He had certainly made it sound that way… but if the desire had never gone away, why did he never act on it until nearly four years later? Had he been aware that the difference in their ages might make Zuko uncomfortable, but finally decided that they were old enough for it not to matter anymore? No, it hadn’t seemed that deliberate; Aang had obviously been acting on impulse, not a decision thought out in advance. Was it only that he had never had such an opportunity in the past few years, when they were alone together, both of them weary and vulnerable? Or perhaps, even if he had, it was always when Katara was close enough that Zuko’s weaker attractive force couldn’t pull him away from her field of gravity. Or was the explanation as simple as that, at sixteen, Aang’s teenage hormones had finally managed to overpower his good sense?</p><p>Zuko knew what he had to do. He had to break it off; he had to tell Aang that this was never a good idea, that he never should have assented to it in the first place. Guilt twisted his insides when he thought of Katara, of what they had done together… but he had to break that off, too. At least he could comfort himself that he had taught her a few things that she could put to good use with Aang (and so much for her insistence that that wasn’t what she wanted him for…).</p><p>He got up to pour himself another half-measure of brandy, which he drank all in one swallow, then hauled himself to the bedroom to ready himself for sleep. He felt like he was walking through a medium thicker than air that dragged at his limbs, making all his movements heavy and painfully slow. It wasn’t only that it was warm and humid here so near the summer solstice; he had grown up with heat and humidity and it didn’t weigh him down like this. No, he recognized this heaviness from days during his long exile when he had struggled to move through the crispest, driest air as through the hottest and muggiest. And he recognized this pain in his chest, too: he felt it whenever he saw Mai, or was suddenly confronted with some reminder of things they had done together.</p><p>Of course he would still have his friendship with Aang and Katara, he assured himself; after all they had been through together, it would take much more than this to undermine it. But… it felt good to be wanted, not only as a friend. (And of course it felt good to be <em>had</em>, after two years alone with his hands…)</p><p>He wondered if giving in to the urge to cry would make him feel better and decided he was too tired. He just wanted to sleep. Sometimes he thought he would never be able to sleep enough to relieve his exhaustion, even if he slept for a hundred years, like Aang in his iceberg.</p><p>He woke at sunrise with only a mild headache. He brewed himself a pot of strong black tea even before he sat down to meditate, which he usually did first thing.</p><p>He was still working his way through the pot, grimacing against the tannic bitterness, when he heard a tentative knock at his door. It might have been hotel staff, it might have been one of his guards alerting him to some problem… but he knew it was Aang. The undergarments in which he slept were modest enough, but he still pulled a robe on over them before he went to the door.</p><p>Of course it was Aang. The Kyoshi Warriors on duty, Ayame and Katsumi, were for the most part studiedly not looking at him—he was, after all, anything but a threat—but kept casting covert sidelong glances at him, looking uncomfortable.</p><p>Zuko cast about for a greeting that wouldn’t sound rude and landed, stupidly, on “Hi.”</p><p>Aang blinked, taken aback by his terseness. “Hi. Um… did you want to go down to the courtyard and train?” he asked hesitantly.</p><p>That was what they ordinarily did shortly after sunrise whenever they were staying together. After last night’s conversation, Zuko had assumed that they would do any morning practice separately and would reconvene only for breakfast before their first meeting (which was some hours from now; the former colonies operated largely on Earth Kingdom time, whereas business hours in the Fire Nation followed the schedule of early-rising firebenders).</p><p>Zuko considered saying no… but it occurred to him that this might be a good way to make clear that none of this had to change their friendship. “Sure. Let me just put on some real clothes and I’ll be out in a minute.”</p><p>He threw on a practical tunic and trousers—exactly like the ones he had worn as Aang’s firebending teacher in the summer of the comet, just sized up to accommodate his growth in height and muscle (he found comfort in the familiar, which made things easy for the palace seamstresses). He came back into the hallway to find Aang very awkwardly trying to make small talk with Ayame and Katsumi. “Shall we?” he said, rescuing them all.</p><p>Katsumi accompanied them downstairs and into the courtyard at the center of the hotel, while Ayame stayed outside Zuko’s door to discourage any would-be assassins who might want to plant something while he was absent. While Katsumi stood watch, Aang and Zuko sat half-lotus on the flagstones, with little flames held in each of their palms, and counted their slow, deep breaths as they absorbed the warmth of the rising sun. One hundred breaths was their custom, each five counts in and five counts out. Zuko tried to empty his mind of everything but the count of his breaths, the flames swelling in his hands with each inhale and diminishing with each exhale, and the play of shapes and colors that the sharpening light painted behind his eyelids, and he almost succeeded in forgetting that anything was wrong.</p><p>On the hundredth long exhale, Zuko let the flames in his hands shrink to nothing, then opened his eyes. About a dozen hotel guests were loitering around the edge of the courtyard, gawking at him and Aang; Katsumi was glaring at them warningly, hands resting lightly on the handles of her bladed fans.</p><p>Zuko sighed and stood up, resigning himself to going through the rest of their morning routine with an audience. Aang looked less annoyed than Zuko felt; he directed a brief sunny smile toward the spectators, somewhere between gracious and bashful. This prompted about half of them to scurry back inside, though the rest continued to gawk unabashedly.</p><p>Unfazed by their audience, Aang removed the orange chogyu secured with a sash around his middle and the yellow kashaya draped over his shoulder to do their firebending exercises bared to the waist, as they usually did. Ordinarily, Zuko would have taken off his tunic and shirt, too, but he didn’t want to be that naked in front of these random visitors to Cranefish Town—or, right now, in front of Aang—so he kept everything on. If he got his shirt sweaty, well, the hotel had laundry service.</p><p>Eventually most of the gawkers got bored of watching them do their morning training katas; these were individual exercises aimed at building control and agility, not combat forms, so if their spectators were hoping for a sparring match, they would have to be disappointed. After about an hour, they finished and bowed to each other, as custom dictated. Their sole remaining fan, a stout middle-aged woman wearing Earth Kingdom green, applauded—very inappropriately, Zuko thought with irritation; this was a spiritual exercise, not a performance—and Aang bowed to her too, with a cheeky wink.</p><p>“I need to talk to you,” Aang said quietly as they climbed the stairs back to their rooms with Katsumi behind them.</p><p>Panic seized Zuko’s chest and flashed white behind his eyes. “Not now,” he said—too brusquely, because Aang flinched back, looking slightly hurt. “We don’t have time before all our official meetings start,” Zuko explained, more gently. “Can it wait until this evening?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” Aang said, seeming a little deflated.</p><p>“Okay, then. I need to wash up and get dressed properly, then I’ll meet you back here to go find breakfast.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Aang with forced brightness. “Sounds good.”</p><p>Zuko was relieved to find that he and Aang were still able to accomplish the organizational tasks they had planned for the second day of their visit, despite the uncomfortable events of the previous evening. Over breakfast, they talked through their plans for the day and strategized about how to deal with various officials, cheerfully pretending last night’s conversation hadn’t happened… but every once in a while, over the course of the day, Zuko caught Aang directing toward him the mournful eyes of a kicked panda-puppy (a rarer and more advanced form of heartstrings-bending).</p><p>In their meetings, Aang charmed and flattered the members of Cranefish Town’s Business Council as he always did, with bright smiles and gracious words, while Zuko handled the more practical aspects. He was the one who presented their written requests—drawn up by palace clerks who had researched Earth Kingdom protocol and studied the frequently-updated maps of Cranefish Town that Aang or Sokka sent by messenger hawk (and Agni help them if Sokka had been the one to draw the map!)—as to which streets they would need closed, to what kind of traffic, and for how long, to accommodate the Earth King and his retinue.</p><p>They finished the exhausting but productive day with a plan for King Kuei to visit Cranefish Town in another three months, at the autumn equinox.</p><p>“He’ll be arriving on my birthday,” Aang remarked as they left their last meeting to get dinner at another of Aang’s favorite restaurants (he had spent enough time here to know which places offered a decent selection of vegetarian dishes), flanked by Suki and another of her warriors, Kohaku (today Ty Lee and a more junior warrior, Moriko, had the unenviably boring task of guarding Zuko’s empty room from infiltrators).</p><p>“Well, that will make an excellent birthday present, won’t it?”</p><p>“Assuming everything goes the way we want it to…”</p><p>“I’ve been gaining ever more faith in your persuasive abilities over the course of the day,” Zuko said… and then realized how Aang might take that.</p><p>“I hope your faith proves to be warranted,” said Aang with a hopeful little smile that told Zuko he had interpreted it exactly the way Zuko hoped he wouldn’t.</p><p>While they ate dinner (their guards standing at a polite but watchful distance), they continued to leave last night’s discussion untouched. They rehashed the day’s work, comparing impressions of the councilors, secretaries, and assorted functionaries they had met—‘impressions’ sometimes meaning opinions, and sometimes, in Aang’s case, humorous imitations of distinctive voices and mannerisms that left Zuko trying to stifle his laughter, snorting and coughing ungracefully into his soup.</p><p>Zuko was dreading the end of the meal, when they would go back to the hotel and he would invite Aang in for ‘tea’ and they would have to talk about what had been weighing on them both… and Zuko would have to tell him it was over. The food that he had relished while laughing at Aang’s jokes about self-important councilmembers sat like stones in his stomach while they walked back.</p><p>They stopped at the stables so that Aang could feed and fuss over Appa, and Zuko found himself grateful for the short reprieve. The staff were providing Appa with plenty of hay, but Aang had picked up some fruit in town to give him as a treat. Zuko mostly kept a careful distance out of consideration for his costly formal robes, but he did put a comradely hand on the bison’s nose and assure him that their day had been exactly as dull as his, but stressful to boot. Appa whuffed in what Zuko imagined was sympathy, the warm breeze stirring his robes and the strands of hair that had come loose from his topknot.</p><p>As they climbed the stairs to their rooms, Zuko’s dread pulled at his limbs the way it had last night, making every step a wearying struggle. Ty Lee and Ayame must have caught up Suki and the others on last night’s drama—what little they knew of it—because all four guards gave him and Aang sympathetically apprehensive looks as they walked through the door into Zuko’s suite.</p><p>“Tea?” Zuko asked. He hoped Aang couldn’t hear the slight tremor in his voice.</p><p>“Sure,” Aang said, not bothering to feign enthusiasm. “Ginger, please, if they have it.”</p><p>Zuko wondered if that meant that his stomach needed settling, too. Zuko would just use brandy for that.</p><p>They sat down with their teacups. Zuko considered sitting in a chair rather than on the couch so that they wouldn’t be so close, but decided that would be unnecessarily cold, and would make things even weirder than they needed to be.</p><p>Aang had said earlier that he needed to talk to Zuko, which suggested that he had something to say in his defense. Zuko wondered whether he should let Aang speak first, to give him the chance to change Zuko’s mind, or just rip the bandage off right away. Did he want Aang to succeed in changing his mind, he wondered, even as he doubted that it was possible?</p><p>“Listen, Aang—” he started to say, at the same time that Aang said, “I talked to Toph last night.”</p><p>They both stopped short; Aang gave an awkward little laugh. “Sorry, what did you want to say?” Aang asked politely, but Zuko could see in his face that he knew the answer to that question.</p><p>And Zuko found that he couldn’t do it—not without giving Aang another chance to persuade him. “You first,” said Zuko. <em>Please show me that my faith in your persuasive abilities is warranted…</em></p><p>There was far more relief and gratitude in Aang’s smile than being allowed to speak first would normally call for. “After I left last night, I went to see Toph.”</p><p>“Ah. How was that?”</p><p>“Mostly how you’d expect. She made fun of me a lot, then I failed at sandbending and she made fun of me some more. But she also said something really helpful.”</p><p>“Oh?” His tone was polite interest, but his grip on his cup was white-knuckled.</p><p>“She said there are three basic types of rocks. I forget what the first two are called…”</p><p>“Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic,” Zuko cut in. “Is this going to be a proverb? I didn’t realize Toph had started speaking in proverbs…”</p><p>“It’s not a proverb; it’s an analogy. Also, how did you know that? About the types of rocks?”</p><p>Zuko shrugged. “I learned a lot of things from my tutors, most of them not very useful.”</p><p>“Toph said it was useful…”</p><p>“For an earthbender, sure. For a firebender? Not so much.”</p><p>“Then how did you remember?”</p><p>“I’m not sure, honestly. My mind just… holds onto things, sometimes for no good reason.”</p><p>“Wow. My mind has trouble holding onto things even when I <em>do</em> have a good reason…”</p><p>“Where were you going with the types of rocks?” Zuko reminded him with gentle impatience.</p><p>“Oh, right.” The slightly reluctant way he said it made Zuko think that he was deliberately leading them into digressions, wanting to dwell within the illusion of normalcy and delay the inevitable moment when they would have to confront the matter they both dreaded. “There are the cooled lava rocks, the things-smushed-together rocks, and then there are metamorphic rocks, which form when one of the other types comes under intense heat and pressure, like when they get crushed between two tectonic plates”—he demonstrated with his hands, bringing them together and then sliding one on top of the other—“or… I’ve forgotten the other way that happens.”</p><p>“Getting heated by magma under the earth,” Zuko supplied. When Aang gave him an astonished, faintly betrayed look, he explained, “The Fire Nation is a volcanic archipelago. Molten rock is a big deal there.”</p><p>“Yeah, okay,” he acknowledged grudgingly. “Anyway… the thing about metamorphic rocks is that they’re mostly made up of the same little building-blocks as the kind of rock they originally were, but they get rearranged under the pressure. Like… crystals that were pointing in all different directions all get aligned in the same direction.” He demonstrated by first interlacing his splayed fingers, the two hands pointed in opposite directions, then bringing them into alignment, palm to palm. “So the metamorphic rock is harder and stronger, at least on one dimension. But it also has better-defined seams where it’ll break cleanly.” He slid one hand up and one down to mime splitting the layers of a foliated rock. “And… there was something about garnets.” His brow furrowed as he worked to recall. “I think— you find them in metamorphic rocks because they can only form in those conditions of intense heat and pressure.” He nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s right.”</p><p>“All that is very interesting—and good job remembering it all! …”</p><p>“It’s easier when I have vivid sensory imagery to relate it to.”</p><p>“…but what is it supposed to be an analogy for? Right now it’s still sounding like an unusually long, un-catchy proverb.”</p><p>“It’s about my feelings for you,” Aang said, as if that should have been obvious. “You were worried that they’re still the same feelings I had when I was twelve, because they haven’t stopped since then. But the analogy is about how something can be continuous in one way, but still change enough over time that it’s not the same kind of thing it was when it started.”</p><p>“I see.” Zuko pondered the analogy while taking another long sip from his teacup of brandy. It was, of course, only an analogy, which could never <em>prove </em>anything… but it did help put the matter into a new perspective. Surely, with all they had been through together, their relationship had survived enough heat and pressure to transform Aang’s childish crush into something not altogether new—still incorporating the experiences and impressions that originally fed it—but different enough to be called something different, to <em>count</em> as something different. Not just a ‘crush’ anymore; something more serious than that, more solemn, more mature. No longer the soft, malleable limestone, but smooth, sturdy marble, or fine-layered schist gleaming with garnets.</p><p>“It can’t completely escape what it started as,” said Aang—made anxious, apparently, by Zuko’s long silence, but also guessing correctly at some of his thoughts. “That’s what Toph said. And it’s true… some of what I think and feel about you now is the same. You’re still brave and talented and <em>relentless</em> in going after what you want, and just… really amazing to watch, with your swords or your firebending. And even a twelve-year-old can spot… ‘good bone structure,’ as I think you put it.” He gave Zuko a playful, slightly lopsided smile, and Zuko felt the side of his mouth twitch upward in response. “But there are so many more experiences layered on top of that now, and woven into it… I don’t just feel impressed, or in awe of you, when I watch you firebend; I feel <em>proud </em>of you, because you’re my teacher, and because I was there with you when you got your firebending back. I feel proud of you because you’re my friend—because you <em>chose </em>to be my friend, and I chose you back.”</p><p>“But… you don’t just want to be my friend. Still.”</p><p>Aang’s little half-smile now was shy, almost sheepish. “Not only that, no. You’re my friend first and foremost, but… the way I’m drawn to you is more powerful than that.” He was blushing to speak so frankly about those feelings, but persevered through his embarrassment. “And the fact that I still feel that way now that I’ve had some experience should maybe make you a little more confident that I know what I’m asking for.”</p><p>“<em>Some</em> experience… but not that much.”</p><p>“Why, how many people have <em>you</em> had sex with?” Aang challenged him, blushing even harder.</p><p>“Just the one… two, now,” Zuko admitted. “But I think Mai and I were a bit more adventurous than you and Katara have been.”</p><p>“Sure… but neither of us has ever been with another boy. Man,” he amended, looking uncertain. “Whatever we are.”</p><p>“True,” Zuko had to concede.</p><p>“So we’re on more of an even footing than you seemed to think.”</p><p>“Maybe. I’ve still done more of the things that I might do with another man.”</p><p>“What does <em>that</em> mean?” Aang asked, brows quirked.</p><p>Zuko felt his face heating now, too, but he was determined to be forthright. “It means I’ve both fucked and been fucked.”</p><p>Aang frowned. “Wait… how would that work if you’ve only ever been with a girl… woman?”</p><p>Zuko coughed. “There are… devices that can be strapped around the hips…”</p><p>Aang’s eyes widened. “So… a boy and a girl can… switch places?”</p><p>“That’s the idea.”</p><p>“Do you think Katara might…?”</p><p>“I don’t see why not.” Zuko considered what he knew about Katara, in and out of bed. “In fact, I think she might enjoy that very much.”</p><p>Aang’s eyes were already gleaming with the light of possibility. Zuko chuckled at him.</p><p>Aang returned to the moment and his face grew serious again. “What about us? Have I convinced you to give this a chance?”</p><p>Zuko tilted his cup and stared into it, avoiding looking straight at Aang’s hopeful face. “Mostly,” he said after a pause.</p><p>“‘Mostly’?”</p><p>“You turn seventeen in three months, you said. Let’s wait until then.”</p><p>Relief washed over Aang’s face, but he quickly hid it behind a frown that could probably best be described as a pout. “Does it really make that much difference which side of an arbitrary dividing line I’m on?”</p><p>“Probably not,” Zuko admitted. “But it would make me feel better. And if three months shouldn’t make that much difference to me, then waiting that long shouldn’t make that much difference to you, either.”</p><p>Aang still looked a little dissatisfied, but mostly relieved. “Fine. Three more months. But then you don’t get to make fun of me when I ‘jump’ you as soon as we’re alone!”</p><p> “I can make fun of you all I want,” Zuko retorted with a grin. “But I won’t stop you.”</p><p>“What exactly are we waiting to do?” Aang asked carefully. “I mean… is kissing off-limits for now? Or just… other things?” There were those panda-puppy eyes again…</p><p>Zuko sighed. “I think some kissing is fine. As long as it doesn’t get <em>too</em> heavy.”</p><p>“Can I kiss you now?” Aang’s voice and face were soft, coaxing.</p><p>Zuko took a breath in. “One kiss.”</p><p>
  <em>“One?”</em>
</p><p>“Just one for tonight.” Zuko held up a warning finger. “You can have more tomorrow.”</p><p>Aang’s stricken look softened back to a disappointed pout. “Why do I have to wait until tomorrow?”</p><p>“I still need some time for all of this to… settle.” Aang’s mouth was pulled unhappily to the side. “And I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.”</p><p>“Yeah, okay, that’s fair,” said Aang, turning his disgruntled mouth-quirk into a reluctant smile.</p><p>He reached for Zuko’s face—left hand to right cheek, the unmarked side this time. Not like the first time, which had started with careful, curious fingers exploring his scar. Like a geological formation, Aang had said; like volcanic rock cooled quickly in ripples of obsidian-glassy smoothness.</p><p>Aang was looking intently into his eyes, and Zuko made an effort to meet his gaze, though he often found it uncomfortable to hold such direct eye contact—he felt it as intrusive, aggressive, like the kind of brazen violation of someone’s space that amounted to a challenge to fight. He knew that wasn’t how Aang meant it; it was supposed to be a communication of trust and intimacy, and he tried to feel it that way as he studied Aang’s earnest, steady eyes, their color like stormclouds heavy with rain, like a slate-gray sea under an overcast sky.</p><p>They both breathed in deeply before their lips met. Zuko let Aang guide them, let Aang’s tongue part his lips and move against his in a slow, even rhythm, deep and firm like the waves that had rocked him to sleep every night for three years. The sea had been his place of shameful exile; Zuko knew it should not feel so much like home.</p><p>Eventually they had to part, though Aang had a melancholy look when they did—disappointed, perhaps, that he couldn’t bend air directly into their lungs so that they could kiss for as long as they wanted (or until they needed food or water, anyway).</p><p>“Do you want me to stay tonight?” Aang asked softly, almost a whisper.</p><p>Zuko hesitated. He knew he needed to be firm about the rules and boundaries he was setting, and allowing Aang to stay might tempt him to test them. He should probably be consistent about keeping some distance between them for now, should tell Aang he’d have to wait until tomorrow night for this, too… but he was lonely still, and had been so afraid that he would lose this respite from his loneliness. And maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give Aang some practice with resisting temptation.</p><p>“Yes, all right,” said Zuko. It came out as a nearly inaudible croak and he cleared his throat before he added, “You can stay. But I mean it about no kissing until tomorrow.”</p><p>Aang nodded. “I understand.”</p><p>Zuko finished his drink and stood up. “I’m going to get ready for bed,” he announced.</p><p>“I’ll just… go get my toothbrush,” Aang said, gesturing exaggeratedly in the direction of his room.</p><p>Zuko took pity on him; he didn’t want to put Aang through the awkwardness of having to go out and then come back in past Zuko’s guards (who were all very clearly taking an interest in this saga). “The hotel provided a spare,” he said.</p><p>“Oh, that’s nice of them,” said Aang, relaxing visibly.</p><p>They washed up in mostly companionable, only slightly awkward silence. When they undressed for bed, Aang left his trousers on instead of stripping down to his undershorts, like the last time he had spent the night… already half a year ago, now. Aang let Zuko get into bed first, then tucked himself against his back.</p><p>“No jokes about spoons this time?” Zuko said, with a hint of preemptively defensive waspishness.</p><p>“Nah, I think we’ve exhausted that topic.”</p><p>Zuko closed his eyes, but found it difficult to relax. Aang’s breathing and his own sounded obtrusively loud in his ears.</p><p>After about a minute, Aang asked gently, “Are you all right? You’re holding yourself tense.”</p><p>Zuko could feel it, and made a deliberate effort to loosen his muscles. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m still preoccupied with… everything.”</p><p>“Would it be better if I left?” The offer was soft and genuine, without a hint of reproach or resentment in it, and suddenly Zuko’s heart ached with gratitude.</p><p>“No,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He thought he meant it, too—and not just about tonight.</p><p>“It works best if you deliberately tighten all your muscles first, hold it for a count of five, then relax them,” Aang offered.</p><p>Zuko tried it, and he was right; when he released the tension, his whole body felt at once heavier and lighter than before. “Where did you learn that?” he asked… though he thought he knew the answer.</p><p>“It’s part of an Air Nomad meditation practice before sleep,” Aang said quietly. “I still do it when I’m having trouble sleeping.”</p><p>“Maybe sometime you could teach me the rest of the practice,” Zuko suggested, soft and tentative.</p><p>“I’d be happy to," said Aang, and he sounded like he meant it.</p><p>They fell silent again, and it was comfortable this time. Zuko’s eyes felt as heavy as his limbs.</p><p>“I know you said no more kissing tonight,” Aang said abruptly. Zuko started to tense again, but then Aang continued, “But would it be all right if I stroked your hair?”</p><p>Zuko relaxed again. “Sure, that would be fine.” He paused, then added more quietly, “That would be nice, actually.”</p><p>He was lulled by the gentle pressure of Aang’s fingers over his scalp, tugging lightly as they ran through the length of his hair, finding and loosening stray tangles that he had missed with his hurried combing earlier. He hummed and sighed with contentment, almost wishing he could purr like a cat. <em>The Avatar’s pet, </em>his father’s voice hissed in his head, but Zuko was too tired and comfortable to pay it any mind. <em>Oh, shut up, </em>he said to the voice. <em>You’re just jealous.</em></p><p>“What was that?” Aang asked.</p><p>Oops, had he mumbled something out loud? “Nothing,” said Zuko. “I must have been dozing off.”</p><p>“Good,” said Aang, and kept running his fingers through his hair. That was the last sensation Zuko was aware of before he woke again with the sunrise.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The first bristle toothbrushes were used in Tang Dynasty China, so don't @ me.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Zuko's Compromise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Aang and Zuko finalize their plans for the Earth King's visit to Cranefish Town, spend some time with their friends, and then spend some time alone together.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For the benefit of one of my younger readers, I've put in a horizontal line marking a section break right before the chapter goes into the NSFW-ish things that earn the fic a 'Mature' rating. Those who are not bothered by such things can ignore it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Zuko woke up, he noticed that Aang was no longer nestled along his back; instead of a consistent pressure along the length of his body, he felt only a couple of isolated points of contact, against his lower leg and, oddly, on his head. He turned over to find Aang sprawled out on his back, with his limbs splayed in all directions, as he had the last time they’d spent the night together. (Interestingly, though, this had not happened either the first time they shared a bed for a brief afternoon nap, or when Aang had been wedged between Zuko and Katara in the inn at the South Pole… though in the latter case it might have been due to the cold; there Zuko had awoken to find Aang clinging to his firebender’s warmth like a koala-monkey to a tree.)</p><p>Zuko had to nudge Aang’s hand off his head to turn over. Aang mumbled something barely intelligible about Momo and egg custard tarts before he opened his eyes a crack, saw Zuko, and slowly blinked them the rest of the way open. He turned onto his side to face Zuko.</p><p>“Hi,” Aang said—a soft, fond echo of Zuko’s curt greeting the previous morning.</p><p>“Hi,” Zuko said back, and he smiled.</p><p>Aang leaned forward to place a light kiss on Zuko’s lips, and Zuko wasn’t fast enough in scooting back to evade it.</p><p>“Hey, I thought I was clear about the ‘no more kissing until tonight’ thing,” he said with a stern frown.</p><p>Aang’s mouth fell open slightly and his eyes widened in consternation. “Wait… I thought you just said ‘until tomorrow.’”</p><p>Zuko opened his mouth to dispute the claim, then realized that he didn’t remember exactly what he’d said. “Did I? Well, I meant ‘tomorrow evening’… but I might not have been specific enough.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Aang, crestfallen. “Sorry.”</p><p>“Not your fault,” said Zuko. “Here,” he said, and put a hand around the back of Aang’s head—slightly prickly, a full day after he’d last shaved it—to pull him closer so that he could kiss him properly, warm and lingering… but when Aang’s tongue probed at the threshold of Zuko’s lip, he pulled away. “None of <em>that </em>until later,” he scolded gently.</p><p>“<em>Fine</em>,” said Aang with an exaggerated pout, his eyes sparkling with mischief.</p><p>They dressed to go meditate and train in the courtyard again. When they emerged from Zuko’s room together, Ayame and Katsumi both smiled at them—one of them warm and encouraging, the other with a smirk that verged on a leer. Zuko glared at Katsumi, and she straightened her face with a cough before she accompanied them down to the courtyard.</p><p>Their audience today was even larger—some of yesterday’s spectators must have told their friends that they could provide a front-row seat to the Avatar and the Fire Lord’s morning training routine. Zuko directed a long-suffering look at Aang, who shrugged, and Zuko rolled his eyes before he sat down to meditate, determined to ignore the onlookers. The crowd had thinned by the time they finished—it must have been fairly boring to watch two people sitting and breathing in silence for a quarter of an hour, even if they <em>were </em>the Avatar and the Fire Lord—but it swelled again during the firebending practice portion of their routine, as people passing in the hallways noticed and came out to watch. After they finished and bowed to each other, Aang waved and blew a mischievous kiss to their audience, while Zuko just shook his head with his forehead pressed into his palm.</p><p>Their schedule today was more relaxed than yesterday’s. Their major meeting was with Cranefish Town’s largely volunteer security force; but it was a friendly, almost informal meeting, because it was mediated by Suki, who had trained them in chi-blocking after the episode when some of the town’s benders, unhappy with the mechanization of factories putting them out of specialized work, had tried to drive their non-bending neighbors out. Zuko and Aang assured them that they would have ample support from the Earth King’s and the Fire Lord’s own security forces, which would of course defer to their knowledge of the geography of Cranefish Town, its most vulnerable and defensible positions, the particular threats to watch out for.</p><p>Just a few more hours smiling and bowing and being gracious and grateful to the Business Council and the newly elected Mayor of Cranefish Town over an extended, ceremonious lunch, then the rest of the day was theirs to spend with their friends. While Aang stopped back at the hotel’s stables to fetch Appa, Zuko and his guards met Toph and Sokka at Toph’s house by the Earthen Fire Refinery. Once they were there, Zuko immediately shed his heavy ceremonial cloak and left it draped over a chair, while Suki and Ty Lee, though still wearing the armor and makeup of Kyoshi Warriors, dropped the stern, silent demeanor and joined them in strolling down to the beach.</p><p>A shadow briefly blocked out the sun, then Appa landed beside them and Aang dismounted, theatrically slowing his descent with a waft of air so that he drifted to the ground like an autumn-colored leaf. The friends lounged around on the beach, some of them building sand structures (Toph’s, as always, were more impressive than Aang’s, while Sokka’s were impressive in a different way). Appa rolled around happily in the warm sand, then showered them all with stinging grit when he shook himself off. When the heat started becoming oppressive, they waded into the water with their boots off (those who had them) and their trousers rolled up and before long started splashing each other in mock combat.</p><p>“That’s cheating!” Sokka huffed when Aang bent a stream of water right at his face. Zuko hurriedly backed away onto the beach when the skirmish began. “Seawater really isn’t good for this fabric,” he said, hands up in a cautionary gesture. “Hey! <em>Lèse-majesté!  </em>Guards, help!” he cried as Sokka and Toph ganged up on him, shooting droplets of water at him that he turned to steam before they could ruin his robes. Suki just folded her arms and laughed at him, while Ty Lee snuck around behind him to dump a double handful of water on his head. The high pitch of his yelp of surprise was the occasion for much mirth all around.</p><p>“So, I take it you two resolved your issue?” Toph asked Aang, not bothering to lower her voice, as they trudged back up the beach, bedraggled and worn out.</p><p>“There was an issue?” Sokka asked avidly.</p><p>“Sort of,” said Aang, at the same time that Zuko said, “Not really.”</p><p>“I dunno, Sparky. Twinkle-toes here seemed to think there was an issue.” Toph was grinning slyly, clearly enjoying being in the position to disclose or withhold knowledge.</p><p>“You never really told us what the problem was, either,” Suki said cautiously, with an air of friendly concern.</p><p>Zuko sighed. “I’d rather not talk about it.”</p><p>“You know Toph is just going to tell us later, right?” Sokka pointed out.</p><p>“I might or I might not,” Toph said in an arch sing-song.</p><p>“Oh, you will,” Sokka scoffed. “You’re incapable of keeping good gossip to yourself. Are you sure you want Toph’s version to be the one we all hear?” he asked, turning back toward Aang and Zuko.</p><p>The two of them exchanged a look. “I don’t really care if you hear Toph’s version,” said Aang. “If she tells you something outrageous, I guess we can clear it up later… but I don’t really feel like going through the details, either.”</p><p>“Wait… that means I won’t find out until tomorrow,” Ty Lee pouted. She was slated to escort the Fire Lord and the Avatar back to their accommodations while Suki went with Sokka to his place.</p><p>Zuko rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry that you’ll have to wait another few hours to be filled in on all the drama in my personal life. I hope you can stand the suspense.”</p><p>Ty Lee <em>hmph</em>ed and picked up her speed to stomp a few paces ahead of him. Suki snorted softly behind her.</p><p>Toph’s luxurious house came with a personal chef—there were definite perks to being an executive partner of one of the most profitable businesses in town—so they ate well that evening, lounging on her spacious back patio under the setting sun, several of them leaning against Appa’s soft bulk.</p><p>Sokka and Ty Lee kept prodding at Aang and Zuko for hints about what their “issue” had been, but they stoically resisted. They turned the conversation instead toward the remarkable growth of Cranefish Town, its cross-National innovations in cuisine, fashion, and architecture (“Someone made an igloo out of limestone blocks!” Toph informed them with amused astonishment), and its peculiar cobbled-together system of government, which was unusually democratic in some respects, but which Aang worried was veering into a plutocracy (“The workers only have two representatives on the Business Council,” he pointed out, “but there are a lot more of them than there are of the owners”).</p><p>When Zuko started yawning, Aang quickly suggested that they disperse for the night. “Can’t let Mr. Sunrise over there get <em>too</em> tired,” Toph said, waggling her eyebrows. Aang sighed loudly, while Zuko clapped a hand over his reddening face and Sokka snickered.</p><p>“First thing tomorrow morning,” Ty Lee said, pointing meaningfully at Suki as she and Zuko climbed up into Appa’s saddle for the short flight back to the hotel.</p><p>“Of course!” Suki said sweetly, ignoring Zuko’s indignant glare and Aang’s wounded look. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you in the dark.”</p><p>Aang landed in the courtyard, led Appa into his enormous compartment in the stables (which looked like it had been assembled by knocking down the walls between six ostrich-horse stalls), and bade him an affectionate good night before they climbed the stairs to their rooms. Zuko’s stomach was doing interesting things in anticipation of their arrival, and he could only imagine that Aang’s was, too.</p><p>Zuko closed the door and deposited his ceremonial cloak, which he had bundled under his arm, on a chair. Aang turned to him, arms folded, and said, “Look at me, not jumping on you.”</p><p>“Your restraint is admirable,” Zuko said with a wry smile.</p><p>“But please don’t offer me tea again. I think we’re at the point where we can skip the formalities now…”</p><p>Zuko laughed. “We blew right past the courting stage, didn’t we?”</p><p>“And I’d rather you didn’t drink what you usually drink instead of tea…”</p><p>Zuko’s smile grew broader and more lopsided. “You don’t need to worry about taking advantage of my incapacitated state after one drink,” he pointed out. Or one <em>more</em> drink, rather; he, along with the rest of the company except for Aang, had had a few cups of a quite decent Fire Nation rice wine with dinner.</p><p>“No, it’s not that. It’s just—” Aang stopped short, looking like he wanted to say more but had thought better of it. “Never mind.”</p><p>“Is everything all right?” Zuko asked, his smile falling.</p><p>“Yes, of course,” Aang said cheerfully. Zuko had the feeling he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming, but he wasn’t going to press him on it. “I’m just letting you take the lead this time.”</p><p>“‘Take the lead’? Like… the lead for an ostrich-horse?” That might be better than the usual insinuations that Aang was holding <em>his </em>lead, he supposed…</p><p>Aang looked surprised. “Oh, is that where that expression comes from? I always thought it was about those dances where one partner leads and the other follows. Taking the leading part.”</p><p>“Oh. I never really… learned to dance. Except the Dancing Dragon, of course…”</p><p>“I know,” said Aang with a sympathetic smile. “I had to teach the kids in a Fire Nation school how to dance.”</p><p>“You… what?”</p><p>“Did I never tell you about that…? We stole someone’s laundry to go undercover in the Fire Nation and it turned out I’d stolen a school uniform. And I found out that none of the kids knew how to dance so I threw them a dance party. In a cave.”</p><p>“That is… completely absurd, but it doesn’t really surprise me.”</p><p>“Anyway. One of these days I should teach you how to dance, too.” He took Zuko’s hand and started doing some complicated steps while Zuko just stood there and watched Aang’s feet.</p><p>“Agni have mercy…”</p><p>Zuko’s expression of dread provoked a bubbly laugh from Aang. “I’ve seen the way you move—especially with your swords! I know you’d be an excellent dancer.”</p><p>“I’d <em>definitely </em>have to be drunk to let you do that,” Zuko said, smiling slyly.</p><p>Aang’s smile saddened and faded. “I wish you didn’t feel that way,” he said.</p><p>“It doesn’t come naturally to me, you know—letting loose. Not thinking all the time about how I look and who’s watching me. It’s not my father anymore, but… now it’s my whole nation. The whole world, even.”</p><p>“No one’s watching us now,” Aang reminded him.</p><p>“Good thing, too…”</p><p>“International scandal?” Aang’s playful smile had returned, and Zuko loved how it crinkled the corners of his eyes, how they gleamed with mischief. The keeper of the world’s balance had a paradoxical fondness for striking others off <em>their</em> balance. That contrarian streak in him obviously wanted to carry on his and Katara’s affair with the Fire Lord in broad daylight, and let the whole world be scandalized. Zuko’s mind was too much taken up with duty and caution for anything but the smallest, most defiant corner of his heart to want that, but he was happy to let Aang want it on his behalf—the freedom to live and love as his heart dictated, which the Air Nomads had prized so highly.</p><p>“Absolutely, international scandal,” said Zuko, smiling back, meeting Aang’s eyes with little of his usual discomfort.</p><p>He studied Aang’s face, noticing the new squareness of his jaw and hollows in his cheeks; he let his appraising gaze move down to his body, taking in the cords of lean muscle running from neck to shoulder, and along his bared shoulder to his arm, still slender but with shape to it now, with substance. Zuko laid a hand on the side of his face and could feel a slight prickliness along his jaw and cheekbone—of course he must be shaving his face as well as his head now. Maybe he would actually wear a beard someday, when the hair on his face grew thick enough. Zuko knew he was expected to, as the highest of Fire Nation nobility, but his facial hair still grew too sparsely; he’d just look like a mangy boarcupine if he went a few days without shaving.</p><p>They were both caught in the awkward space between boy and man. Zuko recalled that eight months ago, before their first kiss, Aang had stumbled over whether to call Zuko a boy or a man, just as Zuko had stumbled over the same question two nights ago. And no wonder; neither word quite fit either of them. They were both still learning how to be men, for the most part teaching themselves, or learning from each other.</p><p>Zuko leaned in slowly to kiss him. He didn’t have to bend down at all, as he had just six months ago—Aang had already caught up to him in height, and would no doubt overtake him; at sixteen he was still growing, while Zuko hadn’t grown in over a year, which meant he was probably as tall as he was ever going to be. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of Aang being taller than him. In one respect it irritated him, because he was older and he had always been taller and it felt <em>wrong</em> for that order of things to change… but in another respect it intrigued, even thrilled him. The Avatar was already a towering figure in his life, had been the axis around which his life had revolved, in one way or another, for seven years. He was more powerful than Zuko in almost every way; it made sense that he should be taller, and eventually stronger, too. Strong enough to overpower him, to hold him down and…</p><p>No, not yet. Just kissing for now, gentle at first, lips barely open, the tip of his tongue ever so cautiously venturing over Aang’s lip to brush the edge of his teeth. But Aang wasn’t so patient, despite his professed intention to let Zuko ‘take the lead.’ He brought his hands up to Zuko’s shoulders, then looped his arms around his neck, pulling him closer; he let his lips open further, inviting Zuko in, pressing his own claim when Zuko hesitated.</p><p>Zuko pulled away for air and for a moment they stood there, breathing a little hard and looking at each other.</p><p>“You’re so beautiful,” said Aang, tracing a curve over his left eye where his eyebrow should have been. <em>“You’re beautiful </em>with <em>it, not in spite of it,” </em>he’d said. Unlike Mai, Aang had never seen Zuko without the scar—it was just part of his face, as far as Aang was concerned; it might as well have been a birthmark… except that he knew it wasn’t. He knew Zuko needed to hear that Aang had <em>always </em>thought he was beautiful, had never feared or pitied him on account of his face—as even Katara had, even if she didn’t anymore.</p><p>Zuko looked down, overwhelmed by the intensity of Aang’s gaze. “Thanks,” he said with a little flustered laugh. “You’re not so bad yourself.” And he meant it: he had grown into a striking young man, those wise, compassionate, sometimes mischievous storm-gray eyes set wide in a face whose broad planes and perfect angles could have been sculpted from golden sandstone.</p><p>“‘Not so bad’?” Aang echoed, feigning offense.</p><p>Zuko looked up again, and saw that Aang was grinning. He grinned back. “Fishing for compliments, Avatar?”</p><p>“Always.”</p><p>“Fine, then: you’re incredible. Everything about you. Everything comes easily to you—every kind of bending—well, except earthbending, I guess,” he amended as Aang was opening his mouth to demur. “Making friends, making people like you. Doing the right thing; forgiving, showing mercy. But you don’t let it go to your head, and you don’t judge people who don’t find it so easy.”</p><p>Now it was Aang’s turn to look down, blushing. “It’s not always that easy,” he admitted. “Maybe I make it <em>look</em> easy because I don’t want people to see my mistakes.”</p><p>Zuko exhaled a dry laugh through his nose. “I've never had a choice about that. I’ve been wearing my biggest mistake on my face for seven years. And my best friends saw nothing <em>but</em> my mistakes for the first six months of our acquaintance…”</p><p>Aang put a gentle hand on the scarred side of Zuko’s face. “This wasn’t your mistake.”</p><p>Zuko sighed. “I do know that, on some level. But I <em>could</em> have prevented it.”</p><p>“Not while still doing the right thing. You’ve always known how; you just had to learn not to be ashamed of it.”</p><p>“Why’d you have to be good at that, too?” Zuko huffed in mock annoyance.</p><p>“Good at what?”</p><p>“<em>Saying</em> the right thing. Being all… wise and comforting and inspiring.”</p><p>“Sometimes I’m really good at saying the <em>wrong</em> thing, too,” Aang remarked.</p><p>“True… but that’s still the one thing I’m better at than you. Recent events notwithstanding.”</p><p>“Oh, I think there are some other things you’re better at…” Aang hinted mischievously.</p><p>“Things involving tongues?” Zuko guessed, then suggestively ran the tip of his over his upper lip.</p><p>“…and maybe other body parts, too…”</p><p>Zuko snorted. “Experience isn’t the same as natural talent.”</p><p>“I guess we’ll find out about that…”</p><p>“No ‘other body parts’ yet,” Zuko reminded him sternly. “Just tongues.”</p><p>“I don’t know. I think kissing can be a whole-body experience,” Aang said, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Fair enough,” Zuko said with a laugh, and stepped forward to kiss him again. Their whole bodies did get involved this time, hands caressing each other’s faces and necks, then starting to push at clothing. Zuko slipped his hand into the draped sleeve of Aang’s kashaya to trace the angles of both shoulder blades. Aang parted the sides of Zuko’s robe, starting at his high collar, and kissed the side of his neck, licked and nipped at his collarbone—aggressively enough to leave a mark, perhaps, but there were advantages to wearing high-collared robes. While his mouth was busy with that, Aang’s hands were pulling at the sash tying Zuko’s robe closed, pulling knotted cords out of their loops by main force—</p><p>“Hey, don’t tear anything!” Zuko protested breathlessly. “I don’t want to have to explain…”</p><p>“Sorry,” Aang said hastily, and paused to undo the buttons properly, the tip of his tongue sticking adorably out of the corner of his mouth while he concentrated on it.</p><p>When the robe was fully unfastened, Aang pushed it off Zuko’s shoulders, while Zuko helped by wriggling his arms out of the sleeves, and Aang tossed it (assisted by some subtle airbending) onto the chair where Zuko had abandoned his cloak. But that still left Zuko’s short-sleeved linen undershirt; even partially disrobed, he was still more covered up than Aang was, much to Aang’s evident dismay.</p><p>“Why must you always wear so many Koh-damned <em>layers?” </em>he complained, and Zuko laughed aloud.</p><p>“Katara said exactly the same thing.”</p><p>“Understandably!”</p><p>“No, I mean she said <em>exactly </em>the same thing.”</p><p>“Let’s get rid of that, too,” said Aang, reaching up to pluck the crown pin out of Zuko’s topknot before he set it down carefully on the low table in front of the couch. “Don’t want anyone getting hurt…” He unwrapped the leather thong tying Zuko’s hair and combed it out with his fingers, as gently and carefully as he had last night. Zuko wasn’t sure now was the time to ask him about hair-pulling… maybe next time.</p><p>Zuko’s lips sought Aang’s again while Aang’s fingers massaged his scalp and mussed his hair. Zuko ran his hands up Aang’s back, slid his left hand under his chogyu to trace the ridges of his spine, found the knot of scarring that marked where Azula’s lightning had struck him—more jagged than the similar scar on his own chest, its central crater deeper, the ridges of raised tissue higher and sharper. Aang shuddered against him when he felt Zuko’s fingers exploring that scar. He took his hands out of Zuko’s hair and instead slid them under the hem of his undershirt, pushing it upward, meaning to take it off, but Zuko did not cooperate by raising his arms as Aang expected.</p><p>“Better leave it on,” he said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”</p><p>“Fine,” said Aang with a dramatic sigh and a disgruntled frown. He left his hands under Zuko’s shirt, though, and ran them up over his ribs toward his chest. He applied pressure in just the wrong way and Zuko twitched and jerked away with a convulsive laugh.</p><p>“Are you… ticklish?” Aang asked, eyes widening with gleeful realization.</p><p>“Don’t you dare.” Zuko stepped farther back with a threatening finger extended before him. “Or I will kick you out of my room right now and <em>never</em> let you in again.”</p><p>Aang raised his hands reassuringly, but his wicked smile was anything but. “Of course, I would never presume to tickle you, Your Fieriness.”</p><p>“And <em>don’t you fucking tell anyone. Especially </em>not Toph.”</p><p>Aang pouted again. “You are <em>no </em>fun at all.”</p><p>“I think Katara would beg to differ,” Zuko said with a smirk.</p><p>Aang folded his arms. “This is <em>not fair</em>. You’re just taunting me now.”</p><p>“Maybe a little.”</p><p>“In three months you’d better take me on an <em>amazing </em>field trip.”</p><p>“Field trip?” Zuko echoed, puzzled.</p><p>“Oh… it’s a Toph-ism. She was miffed that she didn’t get a ‘life-changing field trip’ with you four summers ago… and then it kind of morphed into something else.”</p><p>“Oh, gracious Agni,” Zuko groaned, clapping a hand over his face.</p><p>“Everyone wants to go on a ‘field trip’ with you… but Katara and I are the only ones who get to,” Aang said smugly.</p><p>
  <em>“Everyone?”</em>
</p><p>“Well, Toph, Sokka, and Suki. I can’t speak for Ty Lee…”</p><p>“She doesn’t,” Zuko said quickly.</p><p>“Oh?” Aang asked, eyes alight with curiosity.</p><p>Between one thing and another, Zuko’s face felt <em>very </em>hot. “Mai and I tried… a lot of things. Not all of them were successful.”</p><p><em>“Oh?”  </em>Aang’s eyebrows went as high as they could go.</p><p>“Coordinating with three people is tricky, okay? I’m not saying it <em>can’t </em>work,” he added when Aang’s intrigued expression turned to dismay. “It just… takes some… flexibility. And I don’t mean Ty Lee’s kind of flexibility. That’s why I want us to… ease into it. And it’s really important that all three people are actually interested in each other…”</p><p>“No problem there,” said Aang with a grin.</p><p>“We’re still a ways away from that,” Zuko warned, probably unnecessarily.</p><p>“I know. But I’ll take what I can get, whenever I can get it.” Aang pushed Zuko’s hair back from his face to kiss him again, softly, almost teasing… but he was pressing his whole body against Zuko’s, subtly steering them toward the couch again. Apparently Aang had trouble refraining from leading the dance… which was fine with Zuko; in truth, he’d always been more comfortable following.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>This time Zuko let Aang push him gently to sit, while he half-knelt over him, one knee between Zuko’s legs. Zuko could see where this was going, so he allowed himself to lie back along the length of the couch, pulling Aang down with him. Aang was a little heavy to let him rest fully on top of him, so Zuko turned onto his side with his back against the cushions, leaving Aang room to lie facing him, their bodies flush and their legs interlaced, one of Aang’s legs between Zuko’s and the other bent over the side of his knee.</p><p>Zuko could now feel Aang’s hard length pressing against his thigh, and feeling it drove more blood into his own, which until now had been only half-hard. But they kept their hands obediently distant: Aang’s fingers were threaded through Zuko’s hair again, Zuko’s right cheek resting on his palm; Zuko’s right arm was pinned under Aang’s waist, his hand gripping the bunched fabric of his chogyu, while his left hand roved lightly over Aang’s bare shoulder, down his back, over his hip and along the side of the leg that hooked over Zuko’s. When their lips parted, it was only so one could kiss a line along the other’s jaw, or down onto the throat—Zuko being careful not to leave any bruises, Aang less so; Zuko had to warn him away from the soft skin just below his ear, where the high collar of his robe did <em>not </em>reach.</p><p>Zuko had been trying to keep his hips still, but after a while Aang started moving his against Zuko’s thigh in an instinctive rhythm, seeking friction, breathing harder with the hint of a quiet whimper in his throat. Zuko pulled his lips away and murmured “Aang” beside his ear, a gentle warning.</p><p>Aang abruptly stilled his hips. “I think I’m going to—” he panted.</p><p>“I know.” Zuko’s right hand released its hold on Aang’s clothing, and he placed his left hand flat on his chest, not quite pushing him away.</p><p>Aang understood. He disentangled his legs from Zuko’s and his hands from his hair, turned to sit up, and then stood, knees trembling slightly. Zuko also sat up, and Aang turned back to face him. There was a visible flush high on his chest as well as in his cheeks, though his trousers were loose enough not to betray much. “I think I should go back to my room,” he said, his voice a little shaky.</p><p>Zuko thought for a moment, then made a decision that he thought he might regret. “You can… use my bathroom, if you need to.”</p><p>Aang nodded gratefully; again, he didn’t relish the prospect of going out past Zuko’s guards—especially in his current state.</p><p>Still sitting on the couch in his undershirt and formal trousers, waiting for his heartbeat to slow and the rest of his body to calm down, Zuko wondered what good this was doing. Did it really make that much of a difference whether Aang—still a teenager, as he had just been vividly reminded—came in his pants rubbing against Zuko’s thigh, or just brought himself close that way and finished in the bathroom a minute later? If Zuko was trying to make himself feel more like a responsible adult and less like a— a predator, why hadn’t he sent Aang back to his own room rather than inviting him to jerk off in the adjoining bathroom, where Zuko could faintly hear his grunt-sigh of relief, and then the water briefly running in the shower to wash the result down the drain? And why was he determined not to permit himself the same relief—did he intend his self-denial as some bizarre kind of penance?</p><p>Aang emerged from the bathroom with his face still flushed and slightly damp. “Do you need to…?” he started to ask, gesturing toward the open door.</p><p>Zuko shook his head. “No, I’m all right.”</p><p>Aang was giving him a quizzical look, probably wondering the same thing Zuko had just been asking himself. “If you’re sure…”</p><p>“Yeah. We should get ready for bed; I’m due to leave early tomorrow.”</p><p>“Okay.” Aang still looked a bit dubious, but he didn’t say anything more while they took turns washing up.</p><p>“Do you still want me to stay?” Aang finally asked, cautiously. Zuko had thought it went without saying—he would have kicked Aang out before now if he didn’t—but he understood why Aang might want the invitation made explicit.</p><p>“Yes, I’d like you to stay.”</p><p>By the time Zuko stripped down to just his underthings for bed, the effects of their earlier activities had subsided. He felt Aang’s warmth against his back only as comfort, not as temptation.</p><p>“I’m glad you changed your mind,” Aang murmured into his hair.</p><p>Zuko craned his neck around to catch a glimpse of Aang’s soft smile out of the corner of his bad eye. “So am I,” he said.</p><p>Aang leaned over him to place a gentle kiss on his scar-thickened eyelid, and then on his lips. Zuko smiled back at him before he turned around again to settle in for sleep.</p><p>He <em>was </em>glad. It was good to feel protected, and loved, <em>and </em>wanted, all at the same time, by the same person—the same <em>two</em> people. The pain in his chest never quite left him, but at least sometimes it eased.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Aang's Birthday Gift</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On Aang's seventeenth birthday, at the autumn equinox, he and Zuko show the Earth King around Cranefish Town to make the case for their new nation... and they also keep the plans they made at the summer solstice.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry it's been over 6 months since the last update... I've had a lot going on, both in fandom and in real life.</p><p>Once again, for the benefit of younger readers, I've put in a horizontal line marking a section break right before the chapter gets 'Mature' (possibly Explicit? I tried to be subtle...), and then another one when the NSFW stuff ends and the chapter gets Teen &amp; Up-rated again.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first day of autumn in Cranefish Town was warm and humid enough to make Aang wish he were wearing his usual one-shouldered kashaya instead of his high-necked formal robes. But the Earth King’s visit was an occasion for the height of pomp and finery, so Aang resolved himself to endure it… with the assistance of some surreptitious airbending under the robe. Heat was never <em>too</em> terrible when one always carried one’s own private breeze. Katara, accustomed to the frigid climes of the South Pole, was all but melting, even in a light linen dress purchased for the occasion—almost literally melting, since she would periodically freeze her own sweat and let it absorb the heat from her skin, then flick away the warm water as discreetly as possible.</p><p>Zuko, meanwhile, never seemed to be bothered by heat at all, even when covered from head to toe in layers of velvet and leather. By contrast, in his ornate green brocade robes and elaborate square crown, King Kuei had the demeanor of a wilting plant. He’d insisted that he was perfectly content to walk around the town as the Fire Lord and the Avatar did rather than being carried on a palanquin, and he was steadfastly sticking by that resolve, but Aang wondered if he was regretting it. Aang subtly sent a few sympathetic breezes his way when he wasn’t looking.</p><p>Cranefish Town had been preparing for the Earth King’s visit for three months, and the whole place had a holiday air. The streets where Kuei would be touring were closed to mounted and wheeled traffic, while foot traffic was closely monitored by the town’s security force in coordination with the Earth King’s guards. But the people who made it past their screenings were anything but impatient or annoyed; they were thrilled to see the Earth King, craning around excitedly just to catch a glimpse of him, in a way they had never been about seeing the Avatar—Aang was just part of the scenery at this point—or even the Fire Lord, who tried to avoid this degree of pomp and circumstance when he traveled.</p><p>The citizens of Cranefish Town had been told to go about their business as usual, aside from working around the street closures—the whole point of this visit, after all, was for the Earth King to see how people of all Nations lived together here and their cultures and customs mingled—but ‘business’ here was definitely more festive than usual. Everyone they saw was dressed in their finest, whether Earth Kingdom green, Fire Nation red, Water Tribe blue, or various combinations thereof. The roads and wooden walkways had been swept clean of dirt and debris; shops’ doors and signs had been polished or repainted, awnings cleaned and repaired, floors scrubbed and fresh mats laid down, counters and table-tops waxed to gleaming.</p><p>Nonetheless, Kuei continually remarked on how <em>disorderly </em>everything here was, compared to Ba Sing Se. Rich and poor, factory owner and day-laborer, mingled on the same streets; restaurants, artisans’ studios, and shops of all kinds crowded side by side, many of them with the owners’ residence on the second floor in a way that Aang knew was characteristic of the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se, but which the Earth King would never have seen in the Upper or Middle Rings. The streets themselves were arranged somewhat haphazardly, following the contours of the terrain; no one had planned the layout of this accidental city.</p><p>But most disorderly of all was the mix of national styles in clothing, architecture, and food. Kuei seemed to be uncertain whether he should be delighted or horrified by the multicolored outfits and the very notion of “fusion cuisine.” Aang, Katara, and Zuko all tried to convince him that it was delightful: Fire Nation spices (in <em>moderation</em>, Katara stressed) could improve just about anything.</p><p>Kuei had an opportunity to sample some of that fusion cuisine at a reception with the mayor and the members of the governing Business Council. Toph was in attendance along with her father and an overawed Satoru (and she had been <em>very </em>insulted by her friends’ cautions not to say anything inappropriate in the Earth King’s presence; she knew exactly how to conduct herself “like a lady,” but most of the time simply chose not to). Suki was excused from her Kyoshi Warrior Guard duties to mingle with the leaders of the town security force she and Sokka had helped train.</p><p>Kuei was escorted by his own guards throughout the evening, but he had much more freedom to mingle and speak with whomever he wished to than in his carefully managed existence under the control of Long Feng and the Dai Li. As usual, Bosco accompanied him everywhere, and after their initial bemusement (“A bear? What kind of bear?”) and trepidation at his size and formidable teeth, the members of the Cranefish Town Business Council were quite as taken with him as the courtiers of Ba Sing Se.</p><p>The two hours that had been scheduled for the reception came to an end none too soon, because the Earth King’s proud posture was beginning to droop and the smiles with which he favored the fawning Council members were taking on a fixed, frozen quality. The mayor announced the end of the evening’s festivities, but assured the great and good of Cranefish Town (such as they were) that the Earth King’s visit would last two more days, which gave them ample time to impress him with their unique enterprise and industry.</p><p>Aang, Katara, and Zuko said good night to their friends, with the assurance that they would have more time to spend together after the Earth King’s departure in two days’ time, and accompanied King Kuei to the hotel where Aang and Zuko had stayed three months before—which was still the finest that the town had to offer; they hoped that the appreciation for “quaint” accommodations Kuei had shown during his visit to the South Pole would carry over to this visit. (The hotel’s proprietors didn’t mind having to close to other guests during the Earth King’s visit: the cost of accommodating his entourage was quite enough to make up for any other revenue they may have lost.)</p><p>“It is… a very unusual place,” Kuei mused to his hosts on their way to the hotel. “There’s nowhere else like it in the Earth Kingdom—which is quite a varied place, as I’m sure you know.”</p><p>“Yes, you’re right,” Aang said, taking a deliberately measured and thoughtful tone rather than the smug or impatient one he was tempted to—after all, convincing Kuei of that was the whole point of this trip.</p><p>“It’s not like anywhere in the Fire Nation, either,” said Zuko. “Which has its fair share of internal variation, though of course not nearly as much as your vast kingdom.” Ah, yes, flattery was a good tactic.</p><p>“It is too bad that the Nations were so isolated from each other in the years before…” Kuei trailed off delicately.</p><p>“Before my great-grandfather decided that conquest was the ideal mode of intercultural contact?” Zuko said with wry self-deprecation.</p><p>“I wouldn’t have said that, precisely…”</p><p>“Of course not. That’s why <em>I</em> said it.”</p><p>“I really do think we’re entering an age of renewed friendship among the Nations,” Katara said with that warm, earnest optimism that could soften the most jaded heart. “People of all Nations are more curious than ever about each other’s lands and customs; they’re traveling across borders just to learn more about each other. I’ve seen people from the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation at the South Pole not because they have any kind of business there, or want to find work, but just because they want to <em>see </em>it—the Southern Lights, the midnight sun, the iceberg where Aang was found…”</p><p>“<em>Tourism</em>, I think they’re calling it,” Aang put in. “I did it all the time as a kid, but it didn’t have a name…”</p><p>“Perhaps it is fitting that the Age of Avatar Aang should be a <em>nomadic </em>one,” said Kuei, looking pleased at his little joke… then his smile froze as it occurred to him, as it immediately had to the rest of them, that Aang was not only an Air Nomad, but the only one left in the world.</p><p>Aang moved past it smoothly; that kind of slip-up wasn’t enough to cause him pain anymore—at least, not any sharper or more acute than the pain that always lingered in the recesses of his heart. “I would be proud and delighted if that were to be my legacy,” he said.</p><p>Kuei shot him a look of relief and gratitude—and so did Zuko. “Yes, legacy,” Kuei said thoughtfully. “I know many of my councilors and provincial governors would say I should not allow my legacy to be that I gave away part of the Earth Kingdom. But what if it was, instead, that I allowed something new and—and extraordinary to be born?”</p><p>“Of course that is our hope, Your Majesty,” said Zuko, with a grace and aplomb that Aang could never have imagined from him four years ago. “But it is for you alone to decide.”</p><p>They bowed their goodnights at the top of the stairs before Kuei’s guards escorted him to the grandest suite, at one end of the hall (the one Zuko had occupied three months before), and the three friends, flanked by two Kyoshi Warriors, made their way to the second-grandest at the other end (the one Aang had declined). That one was reserved for the Fire Lord’s use, while the hotel managers, remembering the Avatar’s request from last time, had given Aang and Katara an adjacent room.</p><p>The three of them stood outside the doors to their respective rooms chatting idly about day’s events until all of King Kuei’s attendants had disappeared into their own rooms. After all, they would have expected Aang to go in with Katara, or else for all three of them to go into the Fire Lord’s suite for a nightcap, not for Katara to go alone into her own room—but not before aiming a wink at Aang and Zuko disappearing into the other.</p><p>Once it was decided that this trip would be the occasion for Aang and Zuko to conclude the business that they had left unfinished on their last visit to Cranefish Town, Aang had expected that Katara would stay at the South Pole rather than coming along with him. In fact, he had been assuming that until a few days before he was to leave for the meeting with the Fire Lord and the Earth King, when he came into the room he was sharing with Katara in Hakoda’s house (which over the course of three months seemed to have been shrinking at an accelerating pace) and found her packing some of her things into a travel bag.</p><p>“Are you afraid I’m going to forget you in the space of a week?” he’d asked—joking, of course, but also genuinely puzzled.</p><p>The look she directed back at him was even more puzzled. “What?”</p><p>“You’re not coming with me, are you?” he asked uncertainly.</p><p>“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?”</p><p>“Well, because… Zuko and I…”</p><p>Previously, they had arranged their one-on-one liaisons with Zuko for a time when the other would be away: Katara had spent her first night with Zuko in Ba Sing Se while Aang was taking his Air Acolytes on an excursion to the Eastern Air Temple; and Aang’s last rendezvous with Zuko in Cranefish Town had coincided with Katara’s trip to the North Pole, to strengthen ties between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes and learn more Northern waterbending lore to help nourish the rebirth of the Southern tradition.</p><p>But upon reflection, there was no reason they had to do it that way, as Katara pointed out:</p><p>“Why does <em>that </em>matter? I know what you’re doing and I’m completely fine with it. In fact, I <em>want </em>you to do it; it’s a step in the direction of getting something <em>I </em>want.”</p><p>Ah, yes, working their way toward activities involving all three of them—which Aang also wanted, even if he wasn’t sure yet how exactly they were going to make it work.</p><p>“You’re sure you’re okay with just… spending the night alone while we’re together in the next room?”</p><p>“As long as you’re not excessively loud—which you <em>shouldn’t </em>be anyway—it won’t be any different than spending the night alone miles away while you’re together. Plus I’ll be able to see everyone while we’re there. It’ll be a full Team Avatar reunion!”</p><p>“Huh, you’re right. That doesn’t happen often enough.”</p><p>“And… after you two… do what you’ve been meaning to do, there’s no reason why we couldn’t all spend the night together. We don’t have to try anything new,” she added; Aang’s face must have shown his trepidation. “Just kissing and cuddling is fine.”</p><p>“You’re right, that would be nice,” he said, with a surge of warm gratitude. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that…”</p><p>“Because you’re not as smart as me, that’s why.”</p><p>Aang huffed and put a palm over his chest, as if to staunch the bleeding from her invisible barb. Katara just laughed, and Aang sighed and said, “Who am I kidding? It’s true.”</p><p>Now, three days later, Aang was still grateful for Katara’s comforting, fortifying presence, both in his efforts to persuade King Kuei to allow his dream to become reality, and cheering him on in taking this (still nerve-racking) next step with Zuko. <em>I wonder if she’ll be doing more than cheering me on in the next room…</em>, he wondered idly as he followed Zuko into his suite.</p><p>The first thing Zuko did once the door had closed was take off his pointy-shouldered cloak and crown pin. “Safety first,” he quipped. “Assuming you mean to follow through on your promise to jump me.”</p><p>“You bet your curly-toed shoes I do.” Zuko barely had time to snort at his phrasing before Aang’s lips were on his. Aang’s hands first went to Zuko’s hair—he marveled again at the smoothness of the tightly pulled-back strands, and their silkiness when he unbound them from their topknot and combed them out to fall loose around Zuko’s shoulders—then down to his chest to feel around for the fastenings on his robe (now that he knew where they were) and finally to his waist to untie the sash. Zuko, meanwhile, was having less luck with Aang’s formal garb, which he had never encountered before—at least not in this kind of situation; he just managed to undo the clasp of Aang’s cape and wrestle it off in the time it had taken for Aang to get Zuko’s robe open.</p><p>Aang only released Zuko’s mouth when he needed to break for more than a quick gasp of air. They stood there, panting and grinning at each other for a few seconds while they caught their breath, then Zuko said, “<em>Now</em> who’s wearing too many damned layers?”</p><p>“Still you,” said Aang saucily; “I’ve just figured out how to deal with them now.” And with that he dropped to his knees and started working on the lacing of Zuko’s trousers—which he had not yet had the occasion to figure out.</p><p>He had barely reached for the laces when Zuko’s hand came down to cover his and push it away. Surprised, Aang looked up to find a frown of consternation on his friend’s face.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Zuko asked, a little too sharply.</p><p>“What does it look like I’m doing?” Aang responded, covering his uncertainty with a light tone.</p><p>“What are you <em>planning</em> to do?” Zuko amended, with a strange note of warning in his voice.</p><p>“I was going to use my mouth,” said Aang, now allowing his puzzlement to show. (He still couldn’t make himself describe his intentions any more specifically than that.)</p><p>Zuko shook his head. “Not like this,” he said. He took Aang’s hand and pulled him to his feet.</p><p>“Why not?” Aang asked with a frown, a little disappointed but mostly just confused.</p><p>“I don’t want you kneeling. I don’t want to be in… a position of superiority over you. Ever.”</p><p>“What, because you’re the Fire Lord? Or… because you’re older?” Aang had hoped to avoid discussing <em>that</em> issue again, but apparently there was no escaping it.</p><p>“For any reason. In any way. You don’t serve me; you don’t kneel to me.”</p><p>“I would hope that I’ll be ‘serving you’ in <em>some </em>ways, if we’re going to make a go of this. Anyway, Katara said it can be more comfortable to kneel while doing this kind of thing, so you’re not craning your back and neck at a weird angle.” Something she had learned in Zuko’s company, he refrained from pointing out. Did that mean Zuko was all right with Katara kneeling for him, but not Aang? Why should that be, he wondered?</p><p>Zuko’s mouth pulled to the side in a dissatisfied expression. “All right, maybe… eventually. But not like this, not now. I don’t want our first time to be so… impersonal.”</p><p>Aang didn’t think he would be doing himself any favors by saying that it wasn’t ‘impersonal’ for him because it was the fulfillment of a fantasy he’d harbored for a while, even before he’d made his feelings known. Instead he asked, “What did you have in mind, then?”</p><p>“Come,” Zuko said, and held out an open hand. Aang took it and followed Zuko into the sumptuously furnished bedroom. The bed had been made up in shades of red in honor of the current guest, but the curtains, like the upholstery of the chairs and sofa, were a deep golden-yellow—probably because it lent itself equally well to the preferred palette of either the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation, and could be accented with either as the occasion demanded. But it was also an Air Nomad color, a more muted echo of the color of Aang’s own ceremonial robes.</p><p>Zuko shed his already unfastened robe and laid it on a chair, then turned back to Aang, gestured up and down at his outfit, and said, “Help me out here?”</p><p>Aang showed him how the garments worked, guiding his hands to undo the ties and clasps. It was far more intimate than just undressing himself, but also, somehow, more intimate than letting a partner fumble around with his clothes in a desperate rush to get them off—slower, more measured and intentional.</p><p>Zuko’s undergarments covered more than Aang’s did, and Aang still hadn’t seen him without them in this context—though of course they had done a great deal of shirtless firebending training together, both before and after the day of the comet. Nonetheless, he felt a little shy about removing Zuko’s undershirt, uncovering the scar on his chest—the one that matched Aang’s own, that would mirror it if they were nestled together in the opposite of their usual configuration, Aang’s back to Zuko’s front.</p><p>Aang found himself tracing it curiously, noting its similarities and differences to his own: the pitted knot of scarring at the center was flatter, smoother, the inner branches less defined. He didn’t have a very good idea of what his own scar looked like—it was on his back, after all, and it was tricky to get a good look at in in a mirror—and he had never made a study of Zuko’s, since it would have been rude (not to mention unwise) to stare at his bare chest. He was fascinated by the way the branches split and twisted into new shapes, like a giant tropical flower or a strange sea creature, its many arms undulating gently with the rise and fall of Zuko’s breath. He almost giggled aloud at the thought that he’d had some sort of octopus living on his back for the past four years, just quietly minding its own business.</p><p>“Katara was pretty preoccupied with that, too,” Zuko noted dryly, looking down at Aang’s wandering fingers.</p><p>“I can understand why…”</p><p>“Of course. But I’d also like my lovers to be more interested in things about me other than my scars.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Aang said quickly, and pulled his hand away.</p><p>Zuko caught his hand again and said, “I didn’t mean hands off. Just… hands on somewhere else.” With one hand he placed Aang’s palm higher on his chest, in the center of his sternum rather than at the base, where the scar bloomed, and laid the palm of his other hand in the same spot on Aang’s chest. Aang could feel his powerful firebender’s heartbeat—faster than usual (as it should be), but steady, the never-extinguished glowing ember that could flare into burning life when stoked by the bellows of the breath and send out vines of living heat to blossom into flame from his hands, his feet, his mouth. And he could feel his own heart beating faster under Zuko’s palm, not quite as steady; he could bend fire too, but at his core he was still an airbender, moved by the element that surrounded him rather than drawing it from his own inexhaustible reserves.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Each of them had only one garment left to remove, now, and Aang figured he might as well make the first move, in case Zuko still needed reassurance that Aang was as much in control of the situation as he was. Unfortunately, his nervousness about baring himself fully to Zuko’s gaze did not flatter him (which only seemed to prove that he was right to be nervous), nor did the slowing of their pace (at Zuko’s conscientious insistence). For the first time that day, Aang found himself grateful for the sweltering end-of-summer heat, which nightfall had barely begun to temper.</p><p>Zuko scarcely let his eyes flick down; Aang could tell that he was restraining any prurient curiosity he might have felt, trying to keep this moment dignified. Aang strove to follow his example when Zuko stepped out of his knee-length linen undershorts, but of course his gaze drifted downward, not quite as briefly as Zuko’s. Aang’s exuberant imagination had endowed Zuko somewhat more generously than nature had… but nature had not been stingy, either.</p><p>Zuko turned away for a moment to pull down the covers on the bed, then turned back toward Aang before he slid under them, beckoning him to follow. Aang joined him in the bed, but threw off the duvet over the sheet as soon as he did—“It’s too hot,” he complained, and Zuko grinned his acquiescence.</p><p>They lay on their sides, facing each other, bodies concealed under a layer of fine red linen. Zuko laid one hand on Aang’s cheek—an invitation, made sweeter by the light tap of the twine-and-wood bracelet Aang had made, slipping along Zuko’s wrist against his ear—and Aang scooted forward so their lips were close enough to meet again. After a few seconds of deepening kisses, he grew bold enough to press his whole body against Zuko’s, wrapping an arm against his back to pull him closer.</p><p>They were both fully hard now, their lengths sliding against each other with slightly uneasy friction. Then Aang felt Zuko shift to move the arm partly pinned by his body so that his hand could grip them both—not closing all the way around, but close enough—first running his palm through the liquid gathering at the tip of his cock to ease the movements of his hand. Aang let himself groan with eager relief and thrust into that welcome grip, overwhelmed not just by the sensation but by the knowledge that it was Zuko’s hand around him, around <em>both</em> of them, working them both to completion with the same movements.</p><p>Aang pulled his mouth away from Zuko's so that he could take in more air; he tucked his head against Zuko’s neck and was seized by the inexplicable urge to scrape his teeth lightly over his shoulder. Zuko had been mostly silent, except for the increased harshness of his breathing, but now he let out a soft moan through closed lips and lifted his chin to expose more of his neck. Aang remembered, through his fog of arousal and pleasure, that he couldn’t leave marks anywhere that Zuko’s robe wouldn’t cover—but that did still leave him quite a lot of surface to work with.</p><p>Nearing the edge now, Aang slid his lower leg around Zuko’s, hooking one knee over his, to pull their bodies as close as possible. His fingers twined through Zuko’s hair, tugging slightly in his desperation—Zuko moaned again, softly; interesting—and buried his face in Zuko's neck, muffling his low-voiced “Ah!” against soft skin as release surged through him.</p><p>Zuko’s hand slowed and stopped while Aang caught his breath. After a few moments he pulled away, easing himself out of Zuko’s hold, then reached a hand under the sheet to gently replace Zuko’s hand with his own. It felt strange doing this for someone else—making the same hand movements as usual, only backwards, and he wasn’t at all sure he was doing it well. How had Zuko seemed so deft and confident? From what he’d said, he’d never been with another man before, either.</p><p>Judging from the expression on Zuko’s face—head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open for gasping breaths edged with the slightest hint of a moan—Aang was doing all right. Then Zuko grasped his shoulder so tightly as to be almost painful, and Aang, alarmed, stilled his hand.</p><p>“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “Do you want me to stop?”</p><p>Zuko’s eyes suddenly opened wide (his right did, anyway), and his voice was breathless and strained when he said, “Definitely do not stop.”</p><p>“Got it,” Aang said briskly, giving him an impish grin, and resumed the movement of his hand. It wasn’t long before he felt Zuko’s whole body stiffen against him, then shudder loose again in one wave, and another. He was biting his lip when he came, and the only sound he allowed to escape was a long grunt that scraped out, raw and helpless, from deep in his throat.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Aang pressed his clean hand against Zuko’s chest once more, feeling his quickened breath and heartbeat gradually slow again. Zuko opened his eyes and smiled at him fondly… but it seemed to Aang that there was still a sadness lurking behind this warmest of smiles. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Zuko smile without casting that shadow, as if he never really expected any happiness to last.</p><p>“So. How are you feeling?” Zuko asked, the smile now quirking wryly to the side.</p><p>“Never better,” said Aang, smiling back with as much answering warmth as he could convey. “You?”</p><p>“I may have felt better once or twice,” Zuko quipped.</p><p>“Hmm. Guess I need to work on my technique…”</p><p>“I didn’t mean—” Zuko began hurriedly, before Aang cut him off with a chuckle.</p><p>“I figured. I was joking, too.”</p><p>“Right.” Zuko exhaled a tiny laugh through his nose. “This is still kind of awkward, isn’t it?”</p><p>“It was awkward at the beginning between me and Katara,” Aang said helpfully. “It isn’t anymore… most of the time.”</p><p>“Same with me and Mai. First times are almost never as romantic as you hope they’re going to be.” He chuckled suddenly. “You know, Katara laughed at me because my underwear didn’t match the rest of my outfit in Ba Sing Se.”</p><p>“She <em>laughed</em>—” Aang started, about to be indignant on Zuko’s behalf… but then he pictured the green-and-brown ensemble Zuko had been wearing when Aang and Iroh found him in the catacombs, but with pale red shorts underneath, and he found himself smothering a snort.</p><p>“It’s funny, right?”</p><p>“It is, kind of.” He smiled sincerely and said, “I think you did a good job making this romantic, though. Dignified. Wholesome, even.”</p><p>“Gotta set a good example for the youth.”</p><p>Aang rolled his eyes, but he was glad that Zuko felt comfortable making jokes about his age. He took another gamble with honesty: “One of these days, though, I’m going to live out that fantasy of sucking you off under your fancy robes.”</p><p>Zuko looked suitably scandalized. <em>“Aang!”</em></p><p>“I’m seventeen now. I’m allowed to have kinky fantasies.”</p><p>“<em>‘Kinky’ </em>? How do you even know that word?”</p><p>“<em>You </em>taught it to me, you hypocrite! Mai pinning you to the wall with knives, remember?”</p><p>“Oh yeah, I guess I did mention that…”</p><p>“Toph has, of course, provided further examples. She asked if I had a mask kink.”</p><p>Zuko grimaced. “You don’t, do you?”</p><p>Aang shrugged. “You suggested playing ‘capture the Avatar.’ I wouldn’t mind if you wore the Blue Spirit mask…”</p><p>“I suggested <em>what</em>…?”</p><p>“When we were all camping together. You said if we really wanted it to feel like old times, you could chase me around and try to capture me.”</p><p>Zuko’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t mean it <em>that way!”</em></p><p>“I know you didn’t, and I didn’t hear it that way at the time. Now, though…”</p><p>“Agni have mercy…” Zuko sighed, then squirmed around a bit, stretching. “We should get cleaned up,” he said.</p><p>Now that he was thinking about it, Aang wholeheartedly agreed. He let Zuko use the washroom first; he took his underclothes with him, and came out wearing both shirt and leggings. After he washed up, Aang put on his trousers as well as his underwear—he would have felt odd walking around in just his briefs when Zuko, as usual, was so <em>dressed</em>.</p><p>When he emerged from the washroom, Zuko was sitting on the end of the bed, holding a small bundle wrapped in crimson silk. “Happy birthday,” he said, and held it out.</p><p>“Aww, you didn’t have to,” Aang said, beaming, as he carefully took the wrapped bundle from Zuko. Whatever was in it was metallic and intricately shaped.</p><p>“No, I absolutely did,” said Zuko. “I got such lovely birthday presents from my friends; I’d be horribly ungrateful not to return the favor… especially when I <em>definitely</em> have the resources.”</p><p>And those resources were on full display when Aang unwrapped the red silk and uncovered a golden brooch, its shape an amalgam of the symbols for air and fire: three spirals of thick gold wire linked into the inverted triangle representing air, with three tongues of flame rising from the top two coils. Set into the centers of the spirals and along the vertical lines running through the flames were clusters of small dark red gems, which seemed to glow orange or golden from deep within when they caught the light.</p><p>“They’re garnets,” Zuko said unnecessarily. Even if Aang had never seen a garnet in his life, he would have been able to figure that out. “It’s not as good as the gift you gave me, because I didn’t make it myself,” he said, running his fingers along the bracelet Aang had woven and carved. “But the design was my idea,” he added with tentative pride.</p><p>Aang could scarcely conceive of how much such a thing might cost—<em>how many peasants scratching a living from rocky soil or fishermen on soot-choked rivers it might feed</em>, said an unhelpful voice in Aang’s head that sounded like a cross between Gyatso and Katara. <em>It could only feed them if it were sold for its components to go into other beautiful, useless things</em>, Aang told the voice. He knew Zuko would have paid a fair price for it, and hoped enough of that price had gone to reward the workers who had mined the gems and metal in the mountains of the Earth Kingdom and refined them from their ores. <em>If we’re successful in persuading the Earth King, we can at least make sure the refiners here are paid fairly for their labor.</em></p><p>In the meantime, though, it would serve no purpose for Aang to get on his high ostrich-horse about useless beauty. His lover was the Fire Lord. Zuko had lived most of his life surrounded by beauty and luxury; more than that, it was expected of him by his people, to display the prestige and majesty of his office. Zuko had known real want and deprivation during his exile, and he still rejected needless luxury and degrading service… but he did not reject beauty of any kind, from the simplest beauty of the natural landscape, freely available to all, to the richest, most ornate works of artifice crafted by human hands.</p><p>“It’s gorgeous,” Aang said sincerely. “I’ll wear it tomorrow, to fasten my cape, so everyone can see it.”</p><p>The blinding smile with which Zuko rewarded him was like a second birthday gift. “It’ll be obvious to everyone that it symbolizes our friendship, and— and the Fire Nation’s commitment to make whatever amends we can.” His smile dimmed and turned sad as he spoke those words, but then brightened again, without losing its undertone of sadness, as he continued: “But no one will know what the garnets mean—other than a blending of the colors of our Nations. No one but us.”</p><p>“Us and Toph,” Aang pointed out.</p><p>Zuko laughed. “In a way, I suppose, this is a gift from her as well as from me.”</p><p>Aang grinned back. “I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to take credit.”</p><p> </p>
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